


If we agree, this doesn't count

by WilmaKins



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Civil War (Marvel), Civil War Fix-It, Civil War Team Iron Man, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Infidelity, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Civil War (Marvel), Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-19 20:04:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15517560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WilmaKins/pseuds/WilmaKins
Summary: A year after Siberia, Steve has to call Tony for help. So they make a deal.“You want to pretend this never happened?”“No, I can’t pretend none of this happened – that’s why this can’t count. This is not how this ends, this is not how things are now. If we… if this was ever… If we were going to talk again, we’d have to talk. And I’m not going to rush that, just because the world is about to end. We can’t just say ‘it’s fine’ so that we can get on with this, and then that’s it. But it has to be fine for now. So, it’s just fine for now.”What could possibly go wrong?Contains a description of an anxiety attackWARNING: this is literally the first thing I've ever written and posted anywhere, so I'm not experienced with things like archive warnings and tags. I've done my best, but if there's anything you want to ask in advance please feel free - and any advice on how best to label things is appreciated!





	1. This is the real world

**Author's Note:**

> So, I have never shared anything I've written before - nervous is not the word. But the reason I've taken the leap is because I would really love any feedback, good or bad, about any part of it. I'm grateful to anyone that spares the time. And, really, you're helping an absolute beginner, literally everything is helpful.

They’d always played it a bit fast and loose with this life-on-the-run thing.

 

They should have split up as soon as Steve broke them out of the raft. If they’d been taking it remotely seriously they would have gone underground, at opposite ends of the world, and lived simple lives away from other people.

 

Instead of which, they kept avenging. Not just helping people they saw were in trouble, but looking for trouble that people might be in. Even without government co-operation and Stark technology, they carried on doing their job. These days they had to hack and steal and sneak their information, they had to interview people in back alleys and break into crime scenes and run away before the local police turned up. But still, they did it.

 

Because if Steve, or Wanda, or Sam, or Natasha had been able to walk away when people were in trouble, then they never would have ended up here. Steve and Sam could have just signed the accords, and ignored the problems the UN told them to. Wanda could have stayed in the compound, and told Clint that it wasn’t her problem. Natasha could have let T’Challa stop Steve and Bucky, washed her hands of all of it. They were all here because, when it came down to it, they couldn’t sit back when someone was in trouble.

 

Even when it was a really stupid idea to get involved.

 

And, let’s be clear – none of them were denying that it was a stupid idea to get involved. In fact, this would be the stupidest thing they’d gotten involved with since they first went on the run. They weren’t sure this group of cyber terrorists even existed – but if they wanted to find out, they’d have to investigate the very people that were looking for them. They would need information from confidential government files, they’d need to access the SHIELD archives –

 

They might even have to call Tony Stark. And that would be all sorts of complicated.

 

“But what choice do we have?” Wanda sighed. She spoke quietly out of habit now, like they all did, even though it was unlikely anyone would hear them here. The four of them were crowded into a one room cottage in County Galway, a mile away from the nearest house. It was one of the nicer places they’d found to bunk in, but none of them were in the mood to appreciate it. They were all preoccupied by the papers piled on the coffee table in front of them, the scant evidence they’d collected on a conspiracy that might not even exist. “If we’re right, we’re talking about an attack that could bring down the internet. The impact of that would be devastating.”

“But were not talking about people dying” Sam was playing devils advocate and they all knew it.

“We might be” Natasha told him matter-of-factly “We’re talking about the world’s communication systems, banking systems, military systems, all going down at the same time, without warning. Hospitals rely on online systems, the police do-” But she’d made her point. She looked from Sam to Steve, who was still looking at the papers. Avoiding eye contact. He’d been unusually quiet, and they all knew why.

 

They had never talked about Tony. Not once. Natasha and Sam had both made cautious attempts early on, but Steve had shut them down so completely that even Black Widow had backed off. None of them knew what had happened in Siberia, but they could _feel_ the wall that Steve had built around it. Whenever a conversation got too close, there would suddenly be an invisible resistance, like you feel with magnets. Steve avoided stories that involved Tony, or left him out of them. He didn’t mention him when he obviously would have, he would change the topic before it could get to him. By now Tony was the Thing They Didn’t Mention, a wound they could always see but never talk about. Except.

 

“We have to tell Tony about this.” Natasha told him, simply. Steve looked at her then, a flash of hurt and maybe even panic in his eyes. She spoke before he had a chance to, to save him from things he would wish he hadn’t said. “Look. I get that you don’t want to talk about him, and I don’t care. It’s fine. We never have to talk about him again after today, if you don’t want to. But we have to talk about him now, you know we do.”

“We have to talk about what we’re going to do about this.” Sam clarified, trying to break the tension. He felt like a kid watching his parents fight. “We don’t have to ‘talk about Tony’, but we do have to talk about telling him about this.” He gestured to the pile of evidence again.

 

“ _You_ want to tell Tony about this?” Steve’s voice was unnaturally even. He was trying not to sound angry. Or embarrassed.

“I think we have to… I think we have to get a message to him somehow” Sam sighed.

“You trust him?”

“I’m not saying we ask him to meet us at Starbucks. I don’t know if we can trust him, and I don’t know why we have to risk it – we can cover our tracks. But… we’re talking about something that could take his suits off line. All of his tech.” Sam’s voice softened “You know we have to give him some sort of warning.”

 

Steve already knew he had to call Tony. He didn’t really know why he had argued the point, other than not wanting to call Tony.

 

Except that, as well as really not wanting to call Tony, he did really want to call Tony. And that was a conundrum that could wait until they’d worked out the cyber terrorism thing.

 

“I don’t think Tony would turn us in” Natasha said seriously “I don’t think we should just leave him a message. I think we should ask for his help on this.”

“Yeah, no, I don’t know about that.” Sam frowned.

“We can’t do this without him, we don’t have the technology or the access-”

“What can Tony Stark tell us that Shuri couldn’t?”

“Wakanda is _supposed_ to have the lowest computer literacy of anywhere else on earth. We’re talking about an attack on a system they aren’t even integrated with – and we already know there isn’t anything more she can tell us.”

“I still don’t know if _we_ should be investigating this.” Sam reminded them, although that point had well and truly passed.

 

“Right, before we get into that again.” Steve cut in, authoritatively. “Are we all agreed that we have to warn Tony, at least?” The others paused, surprised he’d conceded so quickly.

“Yes.” Natasha answered for them all “We are.”

“Right, well, let’s decide how we do that safely. We can always contact Tony again later if it comes to that.”

 

Steve would think about Tony, when it came to that.

 

*

Tony knew from the envelope.

 

It was a perfectly ordinary manila envelope, about an inch thick, addressed with a packing label. It looked no different to the rest of the mail stacked on his desk.

 

And then he saw the post mark.

 

He’d last tracked Steve and the team to Dublin, almost a week ago. Since then he’d become far more familiar with the geography of Ireland, and he knew that County Galway was well over a hundred miles away. But that was in keeping with the pattern he’d found in Steve’s ‘covert’ manoeuvres. And who else would be sending him mail from County Galway?

 

His heart gave a little kick as he tore the top off of the envelope – and then immediately dropped into his stomach. He didn’t know he was hoping for anything specific, until he didn’t find it. A raft of computer code wasn’t it, apparently.

 

He was disappointed.

 

He sank down into his chair and let the papers fall into his lap. That cold sadness began to warm into anger. Almost a year, and then out of the blue, an assignment? Not even a cover note?

 

He thought back to that letter. _If you ever need me_. It still wounded Tony’s ego that Steve assumed it would be that way around. Steve would never need him. Steve would never call _him_. And, feeling the weight of those papers, Tony realised he really never would.

 

The last ten months had been full of these horrible little revelations. Ten months of it ‘hitting him’. The day he put Avengers Tower on the market. The day he deleted Steve’s security clearances. This was the day that he realised that Steve was never going to talk to him again, not even via a post-it stuck to something he was sending him anyway. It was supposed to have been the day he booked his wedding venue, but oh well. It could be two things.

 

Or three, as it was also the day he’d received a truly baffling pack of computer code. He picked it up again. Because even though he was hurt, and angry, and tired, he was still going to read it. Steve would have known that when he sent it, which kind of pissed Tony off but that didn’t make it any less true. Tony couldn’t walk away from a challenge, couldn’t leave a puzzle unsolved or a problem half fixed. If he could, he would have walked away from this whole thing a long time ago.

 

He looked at the first page again. It was going to be a long night.

 

*

 

The team had left County Galway as soon as they’d posted the report. By the time Tony opened the envelope they’d made it as far as Liverpool, to an abandoned house about a mile from the ferry port. Sam and Wanda were on the first watch, which meant Steve should have been sleeping. Instead, he was staring at the water stains on the ceiling, thinking. He spent a lot of nights doing that since they went on the run, rehashing old anxieties – things he hadn’t thought about for years, before Siberia. Things he’d thought about far too often, since then.

 

Just imagine if Captain America had been gay.

 

He already knew that no one would understand that, if he tried to explain it. In some ways, he would always be alone in this world. No matter how close he was to his new friends, he would always be different to them – there would always be things they just didn’t get. And there was no way that Natasha or Sam or Wanda would really understand what it would have been like if Captain America had been gay. Sure, they knew it was illegal back then. They knew it was stigmatised and discriminated against. But that didn’t mean they understood. If the world had found out Steve was gay in 1945, it would have been as though they’d found out Captain America was a paedophile.  That comparison was – quite rightly – so repulsive to his new friends that they could never really understand how obvious it had been to his old friends. Good, kind people who really loved him, who still would have been disgusted if they’d known.

 

They would never understand how obvious it had been to Steve, once.

 

He’d grown up in a world that never even questioned whether homosexuality was a criminal thing. Something you reported. He’d known that before he had any concept of who he was, so discovery and denial had always gone hand in hand. If, as a kid, he’d ever noticed anything he shouldn’t have, or felt a certain way when he shouldn’t have, he knew to stomp it down. He knew to be scared of that part of himself, to not look directly at it. He’d let Bucky set him up with girls, he made awkward small talk with women he wasn’t attracted to so that he could convince himself he was ‘normal’, and he ignored it.

 

And then he met Peggy. And, glory to God, he did genuinely love Peggy. He _wanted_ Peggy. Even before anything happened between them, just wanting her had been enough to quiet that anxiety. He was picky, fine. But he could fall for the right woman, he had fallen for the right woman – Peggy had been proof. He never had to think about it again.

 

He would never have thought about it again, if it hadn’t been for Tony.

 

His skin still tightened when he thought about the first time he saw Tony in person. He’d seen photographs of him before then, and he’d noted that Tony Stark was attractive, and moved on. If there’d been any reaction at that point, he’d stomped it down. And then, when they did meet, Tony had been in the suit. And Steve thought he knew what Tony looked like, underneath the mask. Steve had gone through a fight with a Norse God before he saw Tony’s face, and he hadn’t even noticed.

 

Until he _did_ see Tony’s face. Then he noticed.

 

He could still remember that moment in perfect detail. The back of the quinjet, and Steve had just finished securing Loki. Steve had turned around just as Tony took the helmet down, just in time to lock eyes with him.

 

God, those eyes.

 

And it wasn’t just that he saw – he _felt_. He felt immediately, and viscerally, and so intensely that he couldn’t have stomped it down. In photographs, Tony Stark was attractive. But in person he was _beautiful_. More than anyone Steve had ever seen, in an entirely different way. In a way that his body noticed. Steve hadn’t expected it. He didn’t know how to deal with it – so he dealt with it badly. He still cringed when he thought how awkward and cold he’d been in those first few days, all the stupid things he wished he hadn’t said. All because of things he was pretending he wasn’t thinking.

 

If he could have explained… Except that the thought of explaining turned his guts to water. And he knew his friends would tell him it wasn’t a big deal these days. He even knew they were right. But some things weren’t a question of logic. He couldn’t bare the thought of telling Natasha, or Wanda, or Sam, or even Bucky how he was feeling about Tony now. He couldn’t explain any of it without explaining…that. There would no telling half the story. So he didn’t talk about it at all.

 

Maybe it would have been easier if anything about Tony had been simple. If Tony had just been gorgeous and wonderful, then Steve could have just been miserable about loving him. Or if Tony had just been a gorgeous jerk, and then Steve would have known it was simply a physical thing, and he could have been miserable about that. But Tony was just so maddeningly, relentlessly…Tony. He was brilliant and spoiled and thoughtful and vain and brave and spiteful, and sometimes all at once. He would break the rules and save the day, or create a crisis with the best of intentions. Steve could love him and hate him and want him and want to hit him all in the same day – sometimes all for the same thing. What was it about Tony Stark that consumed his thoughts? Why this flawed, infuriating man? But before too long there was no denying there was something. Maybe he couldn’t call it love, but it was definitely as intense as that.

 

How could he explain any of that, when he didn’t understand it himself? And how could he explain anything that had happened without explaining that? Anything, from the very beginning. It had always, in some way, been entangled with _that_.

 

He’d been thinking about all this a lot, since Siberia. Things he wished he could say. Things he’d rather die than say. And now he was lying on the floor of an abandoned house in Liverpool, and he knew he should be thinking about cyber terrorists or maintaining cover. He had tried. But time and time again, he came back to Tony. Wondering, again, if he should have included a letter in that package. Thinking, again, of all the things he might have said. Endlessly, all night. Again.

 

He knew that he was going to have to call Tony. He’d not even bothered obsessing about how to avoid it. He just felt like he needed more time, even though he knew time wouldn’t change anything. He could think about this for a million years, he wouldn’t find the right words – there weren’t any. The truth was, yes, Steve had chosen Bucky, because Bucky was his best friend and he would always choose Bucky. But that didn’t mean he didn’t love Tony. He felt like, if Tony had been a woman, if Steve had chosen his friend over his girl, it would have just made more sense… God, he hated how many of his arguments involved someone being a girl.  He couldn’t go to Tony with ‘if I were a woman…’ He couldn’t tell Tony he loved him at all.

 

He couldn’t love Tony Stark. Of all people. Especially now.

 

The sky outside was getting lighter, at last. In an hour, he could stop pretending to sleep and take his turn on the doorstep. He could try not to think about this somewhere else for a while.

 

That would be something.

 

*

 

Tony had to pull a lot of strings, and spin a lot of stories, to investigate Steve’s report.

 

Things weren’t like they used to be. _Not that Steve would know about any of that. Not that Steve would care._ Tony didn’t have a network of trusted allies in other agencies anymore. The Sokovia Accords – and the debacle they had made of them – had redrawn everything, and Tony couldn’t just ask a friend to run a test anymore. Tony couldn’t do anything anymore, without questions from a government official he didn’t know. He couldn’t just look into this like he used to do.

 

_All of which is Steve’s fault. The oversight, the politics, the constant auditing. This wasn’t in the original Accords – this is a response to Steve’s criminal righteousness. Steve fucked everything up because it felt right to him, and now everyone else was paying the price, as usual. Now Tony had to investigate this on his own, with no resources, while he had quite enough else to do – all to make sure Steve didn’t get caught for screwing Tony over. Steve had made it harder for Tony to help him and Tony was doing it anyway. And Steve hadn’t even included a note._

Tony took a deep breath. This wasn’t the time for one of his sporadic bursts of rage. He’d spent two days setting up a reasonable cover story for this lab session, and it was only good for a few hours. As far as Ross’s spies were concerned, he was in his personal lab working on a non-government, non-avengers, non-of-your-business-thank-you Stark Industries project. He’d casually mentioned enough details that they would think nothing of him being gone for an afternoon. Any longer than that and the questions would start again.

_Like, why are you even doing this? Why are you risking yet another government inquiry, and going behind Peppers back, because Steve Rogers asked you to jump? No, he didn’t even ask you – he dumped a problem on your desk, without even a hint to help you out, after he fucked everything up in the first place._

Another deep breath. 

 

Because Tony knew he had to do this. He knew Steve knew it too, which was annoying as hell. How could he ignore something potentially devastating, just to make a point to Steve? And he knew, deep down he knew, that he wasn’t doing this to defend the world. He _would_ have done it to defend the world, which helped him maintain his delusion, but the fact was that he would have helped Steve regardless. And he didn’t hate Steve for that part – he hated himself. So, for the time being, he was just pretending it wasn’t true. He was telling himself he was doing this because it was his job. Which meant he had no choice but to ignore his feelings and do his job.

 

On closer inspection, the papers had included a lot more than computer code. Although what the rest of it was… Tony felt another spike of anger, thought of yet more words he’d never say to Steve. _You could have given me a fucking clue_. He let go of a slow breath, and it did nothing. He told himself to calm down, and paid absolutely no attention.

 

He was still just so angry. And hurt. And sorry. And confused. Ever since Tony met Steve, he’d been confused.

 

Well, no, that wasn’t quite true – the first few weeks had been familiar enough. There was undeniably something impressive about Steve. Even if there were plenty of things that _weren’t_ impressive, and even if Tony didn’t think much of him overall… he still had to concede some points to the man. And, as was often the case with people Tony found in any way impressive (and, really, with most people) Steve didn’t like Tony. He’d made that perfectly clear from the moment Tony locked eyes with him. So, as with all other somewhat-impressive people that didn’t like Tony, Tony responded by 1) proving that Steve wasn’t better than him and 2) trying to make Steve like him. That wasn’t confusing. That had been happening since Tony got fixated on Mrs Eagleton in Eight grade.

 

It got confusing around week six. Tony swore that Steve started acting differently around then. He seemed to drop the ‘Captain America’ act over the course of a few days, sliding into a new personality like he’d just shed a skin. He smiled. He made jokes. He did little, social things that Tony could never think of when he was trying to explain it – friendly things he couldn’t have imagined Steve doing a few weeks earlier. And Tony found himself smiling back. Noticing things and liking them. He discovered that he actually _did_ like Steve, at least sometimes, and he probably found him more impressive than he’d originally thought… Which was confusing, because it wasn’t how it usually went. Usually, he wanted people to like him out of spite. Usually, he got over people as soon as he’d won them over. But as time went on, Tony thought maybe he just wished Steve liked him. Like he would have carried on being pleased about it. And it hurt in a different way that Steve still didn’t. He was friendlier now, he was better at humouring him, but Tony still knew that Steve didn’t really like him. And Tony didn’t like it. And that was confusing.

 

And then, one day, Tony wondered what it would be like to kiss him.

 

He remembered it perfectly. About six months after they met, on a warm Sunday afternoon. Tony had been passing through the kitchen, and Steve had been sitting at the table. Tony had thrown out some casual insult, something good natured on that occasion – he couldn’t remember that. But he remembered Steve’s reaction in flawless detail. He could still see him, in his snuggly fitted white t-shirt, with his sandy hair falling into those icy blue eyes … it had been longer then, and still swept into that 1940s style… and he pouted. It was a mocking gesture, mindless… playful. And Tony wondered what it would be like to kiss him.

 

It felt like it had come out of nowhere. In hindsight, there should have been clues. A giddy feeling whenever he got Steve to smile at him, which felt nothing like the smug satisfaction of getting Mrs Eagleton to like him. A sudden awareness of his own body whenever Steve stood too close to him, and the fact that it never felt _too_ close. The fact that Tony had already noticed the shape of Steve’s shoulders, or the size of his hands, or the way he looked down when he blushed. But, at the time, Tony hadn’t known he’d noticed any of that. He felt like he’d suddenly wondered what it would be like to kiss Steve, like you might suddenly think about jumping off of a high ledge – he flinched away from it in the same way. He just left the kitchen without another word, and refused to think about it for days.

 

And then he’d started thinking about it. And then he couldn’t stop.

 

Tony wasn’t gay. After weeks of relentless analysis, Tony was at least confident he wasn’t gay. He didn’t even think he was bisexual. It wasn’t men, it was just Steve. And it took several more weeks of sleepless nights and over thinking, but he did eventually accept that it _was_ Steve. Somewhere along the way it had all melted into something new. A desire to impress became a desire to please, became a desire to own, to consume. He did want to kiss Steve. And he wanted Steve to want to kiss him, he wanted Steve to like it, he wanted all of Steve and he wanted to give Steve all of him. Which was confusing.

 

But at least it hadn’t mattered, then. However intense, or strange, his feelings about Steve, they could only ever exist in a thought bubble. He could imagine impressing Steve, and he could imagine kissing Steve – and he did. He could fill hours with day dreams, saving Steve’s life, running his hands through Steve’s hair, hearing Steve tell him ‘well done’, kissing Steve’s neck… but he couldn’t imagine how he got there, or what he did afterwards. He couldn’t imagine being Steve’s boyfriend, or having a conversation about any of this – he didn’t even know if that was what he wanted. And he never thought about that side of things, because it hadn’t mattered. It was so obvious that his infatuation had no place in the real world that he left it in his fantasies.

 

The rest of the time he lived his real life, like a sane person. Pursued a relationship with a wonderful, gorgeous woman that he adored, because it would have been _madness_ not to. Spend the rest of his life single, obsessing over a man that he couldn’t even imagine being with and who didn’t even like him? Steve was a crush, an anomaly, a dead end. And Tony could indulge his atypical interest in his head, in his own time, and it wouldn’t matter.

 

Until now. Now it mattered.

 

Because now Tony couldn’t separate it all out. There wasn’t a sensible, rational line around all the areas of his life anymore. He couldn’t work out how much of his anger was legitimate, and how much of it was just hurt. It mattered because Steve had broken his heart.

 

He couldn’t work out how many of his decisions were healthy acts of moving on, as opposed to… He thought of Pepper. He’d proposed on live television, because he’d needed something to say. Well, no, because he did love her, and he did want to marry her. And maybe because of Steve – why would it be because of Steve? He didn’t know how he felt any more.

 

But he knew how to decipher code.

 

He picked up the report, and went back to ignoring everything else. Or trying to.

 

*

 

Steve’s team couldn’t investigate things like they used to, either.

 

It had taken them two days to make contact with one computer science student in Manchester, and they had very little to show for all their efforts. They still didn’t know who these cyber terrorists were, what point they were making, what they were planning to do or how they were going to pull it off. But they were at least sure they existed now.

 

Steve was pleased to finally have an excuse.

 

“I’m going to call Tony” He announced that night, when they’d made it back to their safehouse. He felt the room hold its breath.

 

“You want to do it?” Natasha asked eventually, with false lightness. Steve nodded. He’d thought about chickening out, but only hypothetically. He knew there would be no excusing it, if he left it to someone else.

 

He took the flip phone out. He felt the gap it left against his hip. He’d carried this phone everywhere with him for a year, he’d slept with it in his pocket, he’d checked for it instinctively every few hours like a nervous tick. It felt heavy in his palm.

 

“You want to do it now?” Sam asked, nervously. When Steve looked up he saw that Natasha and Wanda’s eyes were wide.

“It’s the middle of the afternoon in LA” He sighed, standing up so that he could take the call in outside. “What are we waiting for?”

“What are you going to say?” Wanda asked gently. Steve just shrugged. He had no idea what he was going to say, but he’d accepted that he was never going to work it out.

 

He’d just have to do it.

 

*

 

Steve would ring him in the middle of the fucking afternoon, wouldn’t he?

 

Ross had been in his office literally two minutes earlier. And he would absolutely have known that something was up if he’d been there when the phone rang.

 

Tony had to swallow his heart back down before he took it out of his pocket.

 

_What do I say?_

_Hurry up, he’ll hang up!_

 

“Hello.” Tony’s voice was steadier than he felt. He could hear Steve breathe at the other end, and his stomach twitched. He realised that he was relieved. He had been preparing for it to be someone else. He hated himself for being so needy – and he hated Steve for taking so long to answer. “What do you want?”

 

“Did you get the report?” Steve sounded so much like Steve. It was like hearing a song you haven’t thought about since you were obsessed with it in high school. Tony was instantly back in a different time, and suddenly so sad.  

 

“Oh, was that from you?” Tony breezed, doing a reasonable impression of someone having a casual chat.

 

Little did he know that Steve was having the same reaction – because, God, that was so Tony.

 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t include a letter.”

“In case I find out where you are?”

“In case anyone else reads your mail.” Steve sighed. It was half true, at least.

“Well, a hint would have been _nice_.” Tony answered bitterly. “But it’s fine. I’ve sent a worm to Vistacorp, I should know exactly what’s going on by tomorrow afternoon.” There was a more sudden silence on the other end of the line.

“You think this has something to do with Vistacorp?” Steve asked eventually.

“…Who should I be investigating?”

“…we didn’t actually know.” Steve admitted.

“You were literally just sending me a problem to fix, then?” Tony huffed.

“We think there is a cyber terrorism group that is planning an attack – apparently they’re aiming to ‘take down the internet’”

“It’s a virus.” Tony confirmed “I think it’s supposed to rewrite IP addresses between host and network. Theoretically, yes, it could stop any information being sent or accessed online.”

“We wanted to warn you”

“Thanks” Tony’s voice was tight, like wire pulled to snapping point.

“…and we needed your help.”

 

Steve felt the air thickening in his lungs. The seconds of silence stretched under the weight of it. He hadn’t even known he was going to say that.

 

“I can’t talk about this now” Tony snapped eventually. “It’s the middle of the work day here, you know.”

“So, can I call you later?” Steve breathed. There was another agonising pause.

“I’ll call you” Tony told him.

 

And then he hung up.

 

*

 

It was five in the morning in the UK when the phone finally rang.

 

The others were asleep, or pretending to be. Steve flipped the phone open before it could finish the first buzz.

 

“Hi.” He answered softly.

“So, here’s the problem we have” Tony began immediately, as though he was dropping into the middle of a conversation. “I can’t even begin to talk to you about this without talking about a whole after-school-special’s worth of other shit that we don’t have time for.”

“Such as?” Steve asked nervously.

“How long do you plan on working together before you ask me how Rhodey is?” Tony challenged with a hint of that trademark acidity.

“…how is Rhodey?”

“You don’t have time for me to talk to you about Rhodey” Tony told him darkly. “We don’t have time to deal with it when someone mentions Bucky. We don’t even have time to go through it every time you being a fugitive gets in the way, or the accords. This is Lost levels of complicated. We can’t talk about anything without going through everything”

 

There was a pause while Steve tried to comprehend the fact that Tony was saying no. Tony wasn’t going to help him. He’d asked, and Tony had said no.

 

“…Or nothing.” Tony added, dramatically.

“Or nothing?” Steve repeated.

“We either talk about this, or we don’t. I’m not having you drop sanctimonious little comments in that I’m not allowed to answer.”

“…So, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying, if you need my help on this, and we haven’t got time for the full confessional, then you – and the Merry Men – don’t get to say a fucking word. No meaningful looks, no loaded statements. We pretend this whole thing hasn’t happened, for as long as this cyber terrorism thing takes, and then we can pretend the interlude didn’t happen, and go back to where we were.”

 

Steve’s immediate reaction was bewilderment. He made several observations that didn’t fit into any one emotional response. He was relieved that Tony wasn’t turning him down, after all. He was hurt and irritated by the issues Tony had reference. He was… intrigued, by Tony’s offer? Excited? And uncomfortable. Because however that offer felt, he was sure it should have felt wrong.

 

“Just work together, and pretend nothing happened?” He clarified.

“And then pretend we never worked together.” Tony confirmed.

“Well obviously.” Steve frowned “Tony, I’m not going to get you into trouble over this-”

“That’s not what I mean.” Tony cut him off. “I don’t mean pretending to other people. I mean, as far as we’re concerned, this never happened. If one of us lets something go, just because we’re getting this done, it doesn’t mean anything. No bringing this up later as proof of anything.”

 

Well, that was even stranger. Surely, that wasn’t right? It wasn’t honest, or practical, or adult… but it was compelling. And, Steve could tell from Tony’s tone, it was the only offer on the table.

 

“Fine.” Steve sighed. There was a pause.

“Fine.” Tony repeated. “I can be in London tomorrow morning, can you get there?”

“You know where we are.” Steve realised with a sigh.

“Girl please.” Tony told him dismissively. “Can you get to London tomorrow morning?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Get moving in that direction. I’ll call you when I’m in England and we’ll find somewhere to meet.”

“Okay.” Steve swallowed. “Thank you.”

“…I’ll see you tomorrow.”


	2. This is a dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone that read the first chapter of this work, especially those of you that took the time to feedback - I was so nervous about posting, and I was overwhelmed by the kind response.

Tony had put more thought into sneaking off to London than he’d put into the problem he was there to solve. He’d had to lie to Ross, to his staff, to Happy, to Rhodey –

 

To Pepper. Again.

 

There was a bitter taste as he checked his phone, reading her last text message. Cheerful, casual. Trusting. It was amazing that she could ever trust him, given how many times he’d done this. It was ridiculous that he was doing this again.

 

He should have just told Steve no. Or, if he really thought he had to do this, he should have told Pepper. That’s what anyone would tell him. That’s what he always told himself when she invariably found out, or got hurt, and it was all because he’d done exactly what he promised he wouldn’t and then lied to her about it. He knew he had no defence, even before he did it. And yet, here he was doing it.

 

_Because Steve asked you to-_

 

Ignore that. He did these things because, ultimately, he wasn’t the man she deserved. He lied about it because he wanted more than he deserved, because he couldn’t bear to lose her even though he already knew he couldn’t meet her terms-

 

This wasn’t a better line of thought.

 

And, anyway, he was here now. What the locals referred to as ‘an old man pub’, apparently. Steve had scouted it out ahead of time. Lots of exits, on a quiet street, with one disinterested barman. Tony had agreed on the strength of the description alone. Well, actually, he’d said ‘I think they’d let you in the general pubs, too’, and he’d heard Steve sigh in that way he did, and that was yet another crack on the surface of his heart.

 

It was fine. The colosseum was covered in cracks, but it was still there, wasn’t it?

 

It was dark inside The Royal Oak. Low ceilings and little windows, and furniture that was probably older than the nation of America. Tony walked in and looked right at Steve. He was sitting at a table in the corner, partly obscured by the back of the empty booth in front of him, wearing the obligatory sweatshirt and unmarked baseball cap. Tony would have been able to pick him out of a crown of a thousand people. There was a little flutter in Tony’s stomach, and Jesus Christ, he nearly _smiled._

 

Instead, he set his jaw and strode over.

 

“So, that’s inconspicuous facial hair, is it?” He mocked, while he tried to decide if he liked it. Steve’s smile was tinged with sadness.

“It’s good to see you, Tony.” Steve saw Tony inhale sharply, and realised what he’d said.

 

And then they were both back there, in Siberia. They could both smell the damp, metallic air in the bunker. They both felt the dark foreboding of what happened next, even though they hadn’t known it at the time.

 

Steve could hardly believe it now, but it had been a hopeful moment, at the time. He could still picture Tony standing in that doorway, bruised from a battle that he hadn’t even mentioned. He’d come with help that Steve hadn’t even asked for, and he’d done it with a smile.

 

_“Ross has no idea I'm here, I'd like to keep it that way. Otherwise, I gotta arrest myself”_

  

Steve had loved him then. And Steve loved him now, here in this rundown bar in Brixton. Always prettier in real life. Maybe it was just that some minutes he did, and some minutes he didn’t. And some minutes he loved him so much it was like Tony _was_ all the oxygen…

 

This wasn’t going to work.

 

“You just want to talk about the cyber attack.” Steve spoke professionally. Tony sat down opposite him, and waited for Steve to look him in the eye before he answered.

“Do you remember what it was like before any of this happened?” He sighed. And, in that moment, the memory was so raw that Steve could only nod. “We could have beaten this, then, and not broken a sweat. But we couldn’t even investigate it now, after everything that’s happened. So, if we’re going to beat this, we have to be like we were then. Just for now.” Steve just frowned. That wasn’t what he thought Tony had meant.

 

And it hadn’t been what Tony meant, at first.

 

When he’d first suggested this stupid arrangement, he _had_ meant that they should only talk about the mission. Tony was irritated when he said it, knowing he had to make a decision, not wanting to deal with it. Originally, it had been _don’t talk to me, leave me alone_ , probably in the tone of a panicked teenager. And it had stayed that way, right up until Tony walked into that bar. Until he saw Steve and wanted to smile.

 

He _wanted_ to smile.

 

When he saw Steve, all he wanted was for it all to go away. It wasn’t so much that he immediately forgave him – but he _wanted_ to forgive him. He wanted to not be hurt, for none of this to have happened, to be able to just smile at Steve. But he still hated himself for being that needy, and he couldn’t bear to be weak enough to just let it go. And he couldn’t let it go, he was too hurt to let it go. But he still _wanted_ to let it go. And, even though it was ridiculous, the idea of just being able to let it go, just for a moment…

 

And anyway, he’d said it now.

 

“You want to pretend this never happened?” Steve clarified, still frowning.

“No, I can’t pretend none of this happened – that’s why this can’t count. This is _not_ how this ends, this is not how things are now. If we… if this was ever… If we were going to talk again, we’d have to _talk_. And I’m not going to rush that, just because the world is about to end. We can’t just say ‘it’s fine’ so that we can get on with this, and then that’s it. But it has to be fine for now. So, it’s just fine for now.” He watched Steve consider his offer while he was considering it himself.

 

Tony had just about come to the conclusion that it was stupid thing to say, and he should take it back before Steve had to tell him it had been a stupid thing to say, when Steve said-

“Okay.”

 

Okay? He wanted to ask Steve if he was sure, if he’d really thought about it – but, of course, he couldn’t, because he was the one who’d just demanded it.

 

“Okay then. So.” Tony leant back in his chair and let go of a breath. He tried to remember how he used to talk to Steve. What he might have said “So, you have a stupid beard now. That’s new.”

 

And Steve laughed. And he wondered, for a moment, whether this actually might work after all.

 

*

 

“That’s never going to work” Natasha told him, simply.

 

The two of them were taking the first watch of the evening. Sam and Wanda were in a rundown scout hut, probably unused in twenty years. It backed onto a yellowed playing field, and the nearest houses seemed to be similarly abandoned. Of course, they always had to pay attention, but for now they felt safe enough to chat.

 

“Well, if we want his help, I think it’s the only choice we have” Steve sighed. He didn’t want to defend Tony’s plan – but he did feel oddly defensive of Tony’s plan.

 

Maybe it was just that it _had_ seemed to work, at least for ten minutes. They couldn’t afford to spend any longer than that chatting in a public place. And, obviously, they’d had to spend most of it talking about this group of cyber terrorists. But even in that brief a time, even in so focussed a conversation, Steve had felt that same desire Tony had. He could feel that bond, that history, in between the tactical questions and the lines of computer code. It was like waking up from a dream back where he was meant to be – it really had felt like the last year hadn’t happened. He knew it couldn’t last. But it had been so nice at the time, such a relief from the guilt and the anger and the regret and the pride. It was so easy to go along with.  

 

He didn’t really want Natasha to pour cold water on it right away.

 

“Did he have anything to offer?” Natasha carried on, coolly.

“Yeah, he seems to have the technical side of things figured out” Steve answered. “He thinks it either started with someone at Vistacorp, or they’re using someone on the inside – he’s pretty sure, when it happens, it’ll come from there. He’s still working out _who_ is involved.”

“Well, that’s where we come in” Natasha smiled. “Did he say he’d speak to this Dr Monroe guy?”

“He said he was going to call him and offer him an interview with Stark Industries, try and feel him out” Steve shrugged.

“He knows we don’t know which side this guy is on?”

“He knows as much as we do about it, now.” And then Steve flinched, because the flip-phone had buzzed in his pocket.

 

He knew Natasha had seen how quickly he’d fished it out. And, as it turned out, it was a text, not a phone call. He bit back a smile as he read it.

“What does he say?”

“He says, ‘are we sure we wouldn’t rather stay somewhere a bit nicer?’” He knew that Tony was staying ‘somewhere discrete’. A place he’d rented through some hidden account, somewhere with a lot of ground and a lot of cover.

“You think that’s a good idea?” Natasha’s tone was noncommittal. Steve looked at the text message again, and thought about it.

 

He _wanted_ to tell Tony yes. That wasn’t the same as thinking it was a good idea. And he didn’t think there was any chance of Tony turning them in, or throwing them out, and he didn’t think there was any more chance of them being spotted there than here. Those weren’t the things that made it a potentially bad idea.

 

He knew there was no way their ten-minute truce could last a whole night. He knew it wouldn’t survive other people. He tired to picture what it would really be like for them all to be under the same roof again, but he couldn’t separate it from the memory of what it had been like before.

 

 

This whole situation was just so…Tony.

 

He knew that there would be no talking to Tony, unworkable rules not-withstanding. Their few brief exchanges so far had been proof. The unworkable rules were proof. Tony was too hurt to try to understand. Too hurt to hear an apology, which Steve fully accepted he was owed. But Tony was too hurt to think that there were things Steve still couldn’t be sorry for, even though they’d hurt Tony, even though he was sorry Tony was hurt. Because it always had to be complicated, with Tony. He was angry at Tony, still. And Steve knew if he said that, it would make it sound as though he _wasn’t_ sorry, when really–

 

“Steve?”

“Yeah.” Steve looked up again, at the slimy wooden walls of the scout hut, the layers of bird crap and gaps wide enough to let in a draught. “I _would_ like to stay somewhere nicer, for a night” He conceded.

“Yeah, that would be nice”

 

*

 

Within two minutes of arriving, Steve realised this had been a bad idea.

 

He’d explained the rules to everyone as best he could, and no one had outright said they were stupid. But he knew they were thinking it. When they walked into Tony’s suburban little hideaway, stiff and formal, Steve knew no one else was going to stick to them. And he couldn’t be magnanimous on their behalf. _He_ could decide the past wasn’t worth it, or that his own mistakes had cost him the right to question Tony’s, but Steve couldn’t ask the others not to be angry. He was sure that, any minute now, a tense word would turn into an accusation, and the whole thing would come crashing down.

 

And then, when they’d finally gathered awkwardly in the living area, they all came face to face with Tony Stark.

“Hey guys!” He sang, looking them over “Here’s a thought – why doesn’t _everyone_ go and shower literally right now?”

 

And, just like that, Steve was smiling again.

 

*

 

It turned out, Tony had no mission-based reason for inviting them. He was working away on the leads they’d given him, but watching a laptop run scans wasn’t a team task. Tony was, he said, just being nice. Giving them the rare chance of a good night’s sleep. He’d even brought some of their old clothes, retrieved from their rooms at the tower.

 

Steve wasn’t sure he liked it.

 

He liked being able to have a shower, very much. He liked being able to sit on something soft and not have to worry about someone walking past the window. He liked that no one had picked a fight yet. But, even though he should have liked Tony being nice to them, it left him feeling uneasy. Maybe he was guilty for accepting it without saying anything about what had happened.

 

Steve didn’t like being in the wrong. You don’t get to be the sort of person who sacrifices everything for what they believe in, if you don’t mind being in the wrong. He thought about things, and he tried his best, and he followed his moral code however hard it was, all so that he _could_ sleep at night.

 

But Steve knew, he’d done wrong this time. He should have told Tony about his parents. As it turned out, he should never have gone to that bunker. Hindsight is always 20:20. But, he knew, however good his intentions, they’d been mistakes and those mistakes had hurt people. He wasn’t used to this feeling and he didn’t like it.

 

And now, somewhat uncomfortably, he found that he’d actually preferred thinking that Tony was angry. He had preferred just feeling guilty for the hurt he’d caused, and dismissing his own point of view as something Tony wouldn’t understand. Something he wasn’t going to say because he was bigger than that, or because he was being considerate of Tony’s feelings.

 

But now Steve had a burning desire to apologise. To _explain_. He didn’t like Tony acting as though he’d – temporarily – forgiven Steve this terrible thing, because it robbed him of any chance to explain why it hadn’t been that terrible. To clarify exactly what he was sorry for. Blanket forgiveness felt like a bit of a liberty from Tony, and accepting it felt like an admission he wasn’t prepared to make-

 

But that would have been him picking the fight. And, maybe this was why Tony had said they couldn’t start talking about any of this now.

 

*

 

Tony, by contrast, was in the middle of the sort of adrenaline rush that he usually got at 500 miles per hour, at 35000 feet.

 

He was standing at the sink, in the spacious kitchen of his six-bed holiday rental. Trying to look as though a thousand thoughts weren't tearing through his head while he poured a glass of water. He’d told the others that he’d understand if they wanted to go straight to bed, seeing as though they’d clearly been sleeping in a dumpster for a year. He didn’t know whether he was hoping they would or not.

 

His offer really had been mostly kindness. Empathy with the fact that Steve looked like a weary homeless person. That people-pleasing impulse he’d always had, the one that pushed him to make wild offers to any person in pain, always before he’d thought it though. And he’d just done it again.   _After_ he sent the text, he pictured the evening. How unlikely it was that it would go anything like he’d hoped.

 

Which meant he was hoping for something. Which might have been the other little part of why he was doing it.

 

Obviously, it was very important that he came out of this well. Unlikely, but important. He could say it didn’t count all night long, but of course it did. He would be rehashing these conversations, along with all the others. He knew that Steve would remember every stupid thing he said, even if, by some miracle, he did stick to his side of the bargain and never mentioned it again. Tony’s rules had simply changed the set up. They just meant he would be talking about something different while he tried to best Steve, or get Steve to like him, or make it up to him, or whatever he was supposed to be doing.

 

It was so hard to remember when he knew Steve was putting on clean clothes somewhere upstairs.

 

And then there was a footstep behind him, and his thoughts froze. It occurred to him, suddenly, that talking to Natasha was probably going to be just as bad as talking to Steve – especially as he had no faith that _she’d_ stick to the rules.

 

Thankfully, it was Sam. Sam he could handle.

“Hey.” Sam started, smiling like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to. There was a little, bitter prickle as Tony remembered Rhodey lying on the ground in Germany, Sam trying to apologise… but it wasn’t enough to shake him. The truth was, Tony was didn’t care enough about Sam. The hurt wasn’t the same.

“Hey.” He smiled, magnanimously. “You want anything?” He nodded towards the fridge. He was sticking with being a good host until he worked out what else to do. No one could object to that.

“No, I’m good. I just wanted to say, thanks for this…” Sam started. And Tony held his breath because he knew there was more.

 

“I know you don’t want to talk about anything that happened.” He continued, carefully.

“Well, I never actually said that – I just said it wouldn’t count.” Tony breezed.

“And what’s the difference?”

“The difference is…” Tony breathed. God, what _was_ the difference? “Look, you can say something about it, if you want. I’m just saying, if we’ve not got time for me to answer it properly, and I don’t answer it, that doesn’t mean I didn’t answer it, is all.”

“So, you’re not going to be saying anything to _us_ , is that what you mean?”

 

Sam’s voice had been hardening as he talked. That irritated Tony. It was just so typical of their whole pious guardian routine. Sam had given him a shy smile, like a gift, and within a _second_ they were back to Sam being the superior one. Like they were doing him a favour by not reaming him out, and if Tony wasn’t going to be suitably grateful, they could always drop it. Like they were being so _good_ to understand that he was angry, without even thinking about whether a good person would have done the thing that made him angry in the first place –

 

It wasn’t really Sam he was thinking about, by now.

 

He remembered that letter that had arrived with his flip phone. He was still _so_ angry about that letter. The fact that the very first words were “I’m glad you’re back at the compound. I don’t like the idea of you rattling round a mansion by yourself.” It was so patronising, so presumptive – he’d been moved to tears of rage, night after night, just trying to put into words how infuriating that was. And he’d never managed it.

 

But he had worked out what he wished he’d done in Siberia. He’d pictured it for ten months. He would have turned to Steve, clearly heartbroken but still composed, and calmly explained that Steve had just destroyed the Avengers in his desperation to fall into a trap. A trap he wouldn’t have fallen for, if he’s stopped to think and told Tony the truth about what he was doing. A trap that never could have happened if Steve hadn’t lied to him about his parents. And then he would have arrested Zemo, and left with dignity. It would have been awesome, if he’d just kept his temper…

 

And, amazingly, he remembered that now. He remembered that he would come out of this better if he held his temper. And, even more amazingly, he actually remembered some of the things he had wanted to say. All those nights, planning arguments that would never happen, thinking about the things he should have said, writing speeches he was sure he’d forget if it ever came to it – he remembered one of them.

 

He only needed one of them.

 

“Do you remember when I came to you on the raft, and I told you maybe I made a mistake?”

“Yeah?” Sam frowned, confused by Tony’s change in tone.

“You said to me, ‘that’s a first’.” He watched Sam find the memory “But it wasn’t. I used to run a weapons company, but then I realised that was a mistake, so I announced it on international television and closed the whole thing down. And I created Ultron, and that was a mistake, and that was the whole reason I wanted to sign the accords in the first place – think what you like about them, but they were my way of dealing with a mistake. You can ask Pepper, I am always owning up to my mistakes. If you think about it, you hear me say sorry quite a lot.”

 

And Tony saw the little flicker of confusion behind Sam’s eyes. Something just a bit like panic. He knew Sam was thinking about it. He _knew_ he’d hit a nerve. Watching that reaction was like experiencing a drug high. A sudden rush of confidence and elation like he’d never felt before. He took a breath to steady himself before he continued.

 

“And I personally find that element of my reputation quite odd. I get a lot of it, I know I’m not a great guy, but I don’t really know why everyone just _assumes_ I never admit I’m wrong. When most of those people have actually seen me do it, quite a lot. And you might think that doesn’t matter, but I think it does. Because I think a lot of the time, people respond to me as a person – or who they think I am – not what I’ve actually done.”

 

Tony was very aware of his tone of voice. This was good – calm, casual, generous. But it could so easily slip into testifying, or, worse still, sanctimonious.  

 

“I think you did a lot of this thinking you were fighting with a mad egotist that never changes their mind. Natasha actually said to me, are you incapable of letting go of your ego for one second, or words to that effect. And I wonder, sometimes, if she would have said that to a person she thought of as reasonable. If she thought of me as someone that _did_ apologise and change their mind. I just can’t imagine her saying it to Steve, even though I can’t actually think of a time he’s ever changed his mind… or apologised…”

 

Tony felt his structure slipping away and centred himself. His heart was beating in his ears now, his body thrumming with all the agony and ecstasy of an athlete on the brink of a perfect score. He knew this argument, he just had to get to the end of it.

 

“And, my point is, I don’t know if I could explain why I did any of that without telling you who I am as a person. And untelling you a load of stuff you think you know about me, for some reason. And I don’t think we have time for that, and I don’t think you want to hear my life history anyway. So, what can I say about anything?”

 

There was a swelling of bright, shining joy when Sam couldn’t answer him.

 

“And I’m not saying you can’t answer all of that, if you want to. I’m just saying, if you don’t want to get into it now, or if that computer beeps while you’re in the middle of it, I’m not going to assume you didn’t have an answer.”

 

But he _knew_ Sam couldn’t answer him. And, in a gift from the gods, the computer _did_ beep at that exact moment. Tony knew it didn’t mean anything significant. He didn’t have to check anything. But he knew Sam didn’t know that, and he couldn’t have hoped for a more timely intervention.

 

“Can you excuse me a minute?” He asked Sam politely, already moving towards the living room. He was actually telling himself not to blow it as he walked. Don’t run, don’t pull a smug face – don’t look back at that cool explosion. His hands didn’t start trembling until he got to the keyboard, where no one could see them.

 

He’d done it. He’d actually had his fucking say.

 

Not on everything. That wasn’t _it_. And there would probably be things he wished he included, when he got as far as deconstructing all that. But in that moment it _felt_ like an undeniable win. A rare opportunity to walk away from an argument with something other than a sense of injustice and frustration. Feeling genuinely proud, knowing that he’d been calm, and reasonable, for once. He’d never felt a high like this.

 

This was so much better than any physical fight or shouting match he’d ever won. _This_ was how things were done. He ran his checks and reloaded his programmes on auto-pilot, still floating on the rush of it. He was going to deal with everything that way, from now on. Carried along on the surge of enthusiasm, he thought how much better everything would have been-

 

And then the enthusiasm fizzled out, just like that.

 

Because it really would have been better if he’d learned not to argue like an ass before now.

 

Well, that was a come down. Suddenly, Tony felt slightly tearful. It was like his whole body had been soaked in cold water, washing every trace of his self confidence away. He had let himself be momentarily carried away with that image of himself, but of course it hadn’t lasted. For a second, he’d been the fair and generous leader – for just a second, he’d been Steve. And then he remembered he was Tony.

 

And now he remembered all the other arguments he’d ever had, he was actually embarrassed by his little flicker of self worth. A prick who spent five years being the petulant child, and then had the front to demand praise for talking like a grown up. Once. He had never expressed himself like that before – he’d never tried. Sure, he’d spent a year plotting revenge by reasonableness, but if he’d just put half that thought into selling the accords, or talking to Steve…

 

God, this one was really all his fault too, wasn’t it?

 

Unlike Steve, Tony was all-too-famillliar with this feeling. At least what he’d just said to Sam was true – he was used to accepting he was wrong. And he had accepted he’d done wrong this time. He had plenty of apologies to make. But that was how things always happened, that’s how the aftermath always felt. It was just that, this time, he had really felt like it wasn’t just him. He had been angry, for once. And he thought he hated the anger, but now he saw it had been a pleasant relief from the usual. The simple, crushing guilt.

 

This.

 

He heard a foot fall on the stairs above him, and he _knew_ that was Steve. Two hours ago, Tony had been wrestling with his excitement at seeing Steve. He might not have admitted it to himself, but this chance to just sit with Steve have been the reason he’d invited them all. And now he couldn’t bare it.

 

He took the back way through the house, making sure he avoided him completely on his way to bed.


	3. What is this?

Steve woke up feeling disappointed.

 

He’d gone to bed disappointed, and when he _finally_ drifted into sleep he’d taken it with him. His first night in a proper bed in nearly a year, and he’d spent most of it trying to work out if he was hurt or relieved that Tony had disappeared on him. For the record, it was hurt.

 

And he was still hurt when he got up the next day to find Sam, Wanda and Natasha eating breakfast – no Tony. He waited until he could obscure his face in the fridge before asking.

“Where is he?” That hadn’t been as casual as he’d intended.

“In the garden” Natasha replied. Steve’s head jerked up, immediately scanning the windows for proof. And sure enough, there he was, wandering in wide circles while he spoke to someone on a phone. There was something about the way Tony used his hands when he talked that was painfully familiar, and Steve found he had to look away.

“Who’s he talking to?” Steve deliberately took his time finding the milk.

“Dr Monroe” Wanda told him “Apparently, he’s very interested in meeting up.”

 

Steve wished he could get his guts and his head to come to some sort of agreement. Because one of them apparently hadn’t got the memo that this was a mad-at-Tony moment. Not the appropriate time to observe that there he was again, being clever and helpful and so very Tony… What was Tony playing at, anyway?

 

But, before he could get all tangled up in that, he realised that something was up. He belatedly recognised the strange voices everyone was using. He’d been so focused on his own tone, he hadn’t checked for theirs – but he recognised it now. He poured his coffee and took a seat at the table.

 

“Something happened?” He asked, taking a sip. And he knew whatever it was must’ve been bad, because he could _see_ Sam trying to find the words for it.

“Tony told Sam he isn’t a narcissist, we all just treat him like one” Nat summarised for him, eventually. Her tone was cool but there was still some feeling in it somewhere.

“Tony says he isn’t a narcissist?” Steve repeated, frowning. Because, really, what _was_ Tony playing at? This whole thing was confusing enough, without him pointlessly questioning the basic facts of their reality.

                _The head would just like to confirm sir, that this is a mad-at-Tony moment._

And yes, it was definitely a mad-at-Tony moment. A frustrated-by-Tony moment.

“That’s not exactly what he said” Sam winced slightly as he said it. Steve tried not to transfer his frustration onto Sam.

“So, what did he say?”

“When he came to me on the raft, before he went to find you in Siberia, he said to me, ‘I may have made a mistake’, and I said ‘that’s a first’.” Sam sighed. “And he was just saying, it wasn’t a first. He said, he’d stopped manufacturing weapons, he accepted Ultron – he was just saying, he does accept when he’s wrong.”

 

Steve had to pause to think that through again. Okay. He knew all of that. He had never actually thought about that side of things, specifically, but yes, he’d known Tony had done all that. And, yeah, he could remember Tony saying sorry a lot…

 

He began to feel defensive, and he didn’t recognise it as a reaction to being unsure.

_He’d_ never said Tony didn’t apologise. He could convince himself, now, that he’d never even thought that. He didn’t remember thinking that. But he did remember thinking Tony was an egomaniac – or, no, not even thinking it. Just knowing it. It being a thing you didn’t think about -

 

“ _He_ says he’s a narcissist.” Steve huffed “That’s one of Nick’s favourite Tony stories – he read your report on him, and you called him a narcissist and he said it was fair…” But, when he looked at Natasha, he saw something else in her eyes. He saw Wanda and Sam straighten up a bit. “…What?”

“That isn’t what a narcissist would do, though.” Natasha admitted. He could tell, they’d all already discussed it.

“What do you mean?”

“Narcissists don’t tend to know they’re narcissists.” She explained again. But, when he thought about it, that was obvious. When he thought about it… he couldn’t remember why he thought Tony was a narcissist. He was sure there were reasons. There were obviously reasons. But… He was, momentarily, unable to think what a narcissist was. Someone with a high opinion of themselves, and someone who was sensitive to criticism… but there must be more to it than that.

 

“Why did you call him that?” Steve asked Nat directly, his voice darker than he meant it to be. “You called him a textbook narcissist.” And he saw Nat look down, and he already knew he wasn’t going to get a satisfactory answer.

“He does actively pretend to be one” Nat sighed, like she wasn’t quite buying it herself. “And that wasn’t a psychiatric report – I wasn’t there to diagnose him, I was there to see if he could cope with stress. That stuff was all an overview – it’s not as though we all based our opinion on that one line.” Nat sounded unusually defensive. Steve felt like that probably meant something – but for now, his brain had snagged on something else.

 

“What do you mean, see how he’d cope with stress?”

“I just mean, it wasn’t like I could sit him down and chat about his feelings” Nat tried to shorthand. But Steve wanted to know.

“Why, what _were_ you doing?”

“Steve, you didn’t know Tony then – neither did I. All we knew was that he was behaving erratically, and that he was potentially- that he had potential. And I don’t know if you’d have invited that Tony onto the team. Not without seeing if he could handle it.”

“Seeing _how_?”

“By giving him an opportunity to be irresponsible and seeing if he took it” Nat started, and then stopped herself “And, mostly, it _was_ just reporting back what he was doing anyway. I’m just saying, I never said it was a comprehensive personality profile…”

 

                _Sorry, sir, the gut would like to know if it’s okay to feel achingly sorry for Tony Stark?_

 

Steve didn’t know much about Tony back then. But he did know that, when Natasha met him, Tony thought he was dying. When Natasha was ‘giving him the opportunity to do irresponsible things’, Tony had thought he was dying.

 

And, also, had they all just casually accepted that Tony Stark wasn’t an egotist?

 

But, before Steve could work out what to do with any of it, Tony walked back in. He looked very pleased with himself – at least until he saw the faces of everyone around that table.

“Oh God, what’ve I done?”

 

Tony would have been very happy with how well that landed, if he’d been doing it on purpose. But he’d just been making a joke. A very Tony joke.

 

“Nothing” Steve shook his head “We’re…” He glanced around the others. “Never mind, it’s nothing.”

“Hm?” Tony raised his eyebrows.

“Doesn’t count.” He mumbled, with a little shrug.    

“Okay…so, moving swiftly past that… You’ll be pleased to hear that Dr Monroe just so happens to be in London, and as luck would have it, so am I, so I’m meeting up with him this afternoon.” Tony reverted back to his earlier good cheer. “Also, he’s definitely involved.”

“You’re sure?” Steve managed over a thickness in his throat.

“He knows too much about it for someone who hasn’t seen it close up, and he’s lying about something.” Tony informed them, smugly.

“So what do you want to say to him?”

“Well, that’s technically your call, if we’re doing this old-school” Tony reminded him, casually. “But if you’d like my advice – I think I’ll have enough data by then to catch him out”

“Catch him out and do what?” Nat asked.

“Get him to tell me everything he knows, without him even knowing he’s done it, come back here and shut the whole thing down, and then I was thinking maybe Chinese?” He reeled off with mock blasé, rounded out with a trademark Tony Stark grin.

 

Ah. That was why everyone thought Tony Stark was an egotist. This whole … _vibe_.

 

“Well, seems stupid to go to all this effort to bring in an expert and not take his advice” Steve tried to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “What data do you need?”

“Just what I’m running now” Tony told him, grabbing a piece of toast from a plate on the table. “Should be done in an hour, loads of time.”

“When’re you meeting him?” Sam asked.

“Two this afternoon. Like I said, loads of time.” He glanced up at Steve. “You want to come?”

“Me?” Steve asked, surprised.

“I’m not suggesting you sit in on the interview.” Tony clarified, dryly “But I think I’ve picked a good location. You could definitely stay nearby – you could probably listen in, without anyone knowing you were there.”

“Yeah…” He glanced at the others again “I’ll have a look at the location, but it’s probably a good idea.”

“Okay, well, I’m going to finish getting everything I need, let me know what you’re doing”

 

He went to walk past the table, through to the living room – but he paused to put a hand on Steve’s shoulder.

 

“You should really eat something” He told him with pretend concern “You’re starving to death out there on the streets.”

 

Steve looked at the plate of toast, and it turned his stomach.

 

*

 

Steve had to excuse himself as soon as Tony had disappeared from view. It was a physical instinct, a _need_ to get away and think. Fight or flight.

 

He went out into the back garden and filled his lungs with air. His first thought was that he might be angry at Natasha for something she’d done years ago. He’d known that she’d been sent to spy on Tony, obviously. That hadn’t sounded so bad… But now, it sounded like SHIELD had sent her to taunt a dying man, just to see if he’d snap. They were testing Tony, just to see how damaged he was, just standing there taking notes while his life fell apart. All of a sudden, it sounded so cruel.

 

But he really didn’t have time to get into that. He didn’t even know what had happened. And they had enough problems dealing with something that had happened last year, without dredging up things from five years earlier. It would be enough trouble making sure no one picked a fight with Tony, without fighting amongst themselves.

 

He couldn’t think about that. So, what was he out here to think about?

 

And, seemingly out of nowhere, memories began to spring up in his head. All of them in Tony’s voice.

 

_Actually, he’s the boss_.

_And then, Ultron – my fault._

_We need to be kept in check! And, whatever form that takes, I’m game._

_And I saw that I had become part of a system that is comfortable with Zero responsibility._

_Call it, Captain._

 

But he _knew_ he thought Tony was a narcissist for a reason. Well, maybe narcissist wasn’t right, but an egotist… Tony Stark _did_ have an ego. Of course he did.

 

And suddenly there was an equally physical impulse to go back inside. A _need_ to see Tony. And he had no idea what he was going to do when he got there – but he appeared to already be walking around the back of the house. Making his way to the living room without walking back past the others.

 

He didn’t think what he was doing until he’d come to a sudden stop in the middle of the rug. Tony looked up from the laptop, and Steve’s heart seized. What exactly was he going to say?

“You okay?” Tony asked, after a second. No, Steve wasn’t okay.

“Do you think you’re a narcissist?” Steve outright asked, because he’d run out of time to think of anything else. He saw Tony take a slow breath, and he realised he’d not been very subtle. He might as well have burst in with ‘Sam said you said...’. But he’d said it now.

 

“A bit.” Tony shrugged.

“A bit?” Steve repeated.

“Not everything is binary, Steve” Tony sighed. “People aren’t always good or bad, it isn’t always right or wrong – it’s not that people are narcissists, or they aren’t. Some people, more than others.” And Jesus Christ, wasn’t that the most Tony response in the world. Of course he was ‘a bit’ of a narcissist. There wasn’t a more confusing response he could have given.

“And how do you make that out?” Steve pressed, carefully.

“I take things too personally.” Tony conceded. “I like attention, good or bad. I took it upon myself to create an intelligent global defence system without running it past anyone, that was pretty egotistical. And I do think I’m awesome.”

 

And Steve would have liked to have been comforted by that. He would have preferred to have simply been vindicated. But the problem was, he _knew_ so much of that wasn’t true.

 

And, suddenly, he realised that he knew why Tony did this. He’s always known it. He’d just never thought of the words. And, now that he had, he couldn’t keep them in his mouth.

 

“You’re a hard person to be nice to, you know that?” Steve breathed.

“Ah, well, that explains it.” Tony quipped back, looking back to the computer screen even though nothing was moving.

“You _don’t_ like attention, and you _don’t_ like praise – and you’re very clever about getting out of it.” Tony looked up at him, thoroughly confused.

“ _Me_?” He challenged, eyebrows raised.

 

“If I were to tell you that you were the bravest man I had ever met-”

“-I’d say yeah, by a black hole’s worth of-”

“-You’d do _that_ ” Steve interrupted right back, and Tony stopped dead. “You’d say it _first_. And I know why you do that.”

“You do?” Tony sounded sceptical.

“You know, Tony, no one on earth knows more short jokes than me. Or skinny jokes, or sick-kid jokes, or weak kid jokes. And the reason I know them isn’t because I kept hearing them – it’s because I kept telling them. I walked into so many rooms and cracked a short joke, right off the bat, because I wanted to get in before anyone else did. So they already knew I didn’t care. So they couldn’t say it, because I already had. I know that’s what you’re doing.”

 

All of Tony’s retorts had dried up in his chest. He suddenly felt completely naked. And he felt exactly as vulnerable and as excited as he would be, standing naked in front of Steve.

 

“You give yourself a compliment before anyone else can. Because if you said, no, really, I’m not so great, you know they’d argue with you. But when you say it first, you know they won’t bother – you know no one will ever bother, if they think you’re arrogant. It’s very clever.”

 

Steve had started off being angry about all that. He’d always been annoyed at how difficult Tony made it to help him. His sympathy for Tony was always an inch away from irritation, because the man just _would not_ make his own life easier. Steve had always resented Tony for making him feel so damn much for him, and never giving him a way of making it better. He’d started out wanting to give Tony a piece of his mind, just to even the score, and now that he’d said it… that was a ridiculous reason to be angry at someone.

 

That was a horrible reason to be angry at someone.  

 

For a second, they just stared at each other.

 

“If you know all that” Tony began, his voice suddenly quiet “why did you assume I was just being stubborn?”

“I didn’t” Steve answered earnestly “I always thought you were doing what you thought was right”

 

And Tony thought back to that fucking letter.

 

_I know you're doing what you believe in, and that's all any of us can do. That's all any of us should..._

And, infuriatingly, he had to concede that point. He was still angry about this – but he had to accept he was angry at Natasha, and Sam, and Clint. The people who had actually said it. He couldn’t transfer this particular outrage onto Steve.

 

And Steve was right; Tony was deeply uncomfortable with how close they were getting to Steve sincerely saying something nice about him. Tony had no idea what to do with his face at times like that. And he went to put up his usual defences, but he overthought it, and he stumbled. Like when you think about your security number half way through keying it in, and you realise you don’t actually know it. And then you start thinking about it, and it stops being automatic, and suddenly you can’t do it anymore. Tony had been putting up a front since he was six years old, without even thinking about it. But now he knew Steve knew. He wondered if Steve had always known.

 

Steve could see Tony struggling. And it was partly that he empathised with Tony’s obvious discomfort – but mainly it was being aware of his own. He’s used up all the thoughts that had powered his walk in here, and now that he was faced with it, he didn’t feel ready for the aftermath.

 

He actually told himself, it’s alright, this doesn’t count.

 

“Where is this place you’re meeting Dr Munroe?” He asked, letting them both of the hook. Tony blinked, and caught up.

“Oh, uh, hang on, I’ll show you” He mumbled, looking behind him for his tablet. He brought up the map, and handed it to Steve.

 

“It’s a good location” Steve commented after a second.

“So you want to tag along?” Tony asked with the worst attempt at nonchalance in human history.

“Yeah, I’ll tag along.” Steve immediately topped it. And then he handed the tablet back, awkwardly.

 

“I’ll meet you before then” He blurted, and again, had an undeniable urge to be elsewhere.

 

*

 

It had been difficult for everyone to avoid one another for the rest of the morning – but they’d all been very determined.

 

Tony had stayed in the living room with the laptop, but only because everyone else was safely sequestered in their rooms. He was nervous of any of them deciding to venture out, his stomach twitching every time the floorboards creaked, but he couldn’t bear the thought of squirreling himself away anywhere else. The thoughts he was trying to catalogue were too big to be crammed into a bedroom with him.

 

Because, seriously, what the _fuck_ had that all been about?

 

Where had any of it even come from? All the many points they still had to argue, The Accords, Siberia, the great Avengers diaspora – and Steve had chosen _now_ to do a deep dive into Tony’s subconscious?

 

_If I were to tell you that you were the bravest man I had ever met_

 

Was hardly the key take away, was it? He wasn’t going to have anything to say to Steve, if he spent the next two hours fanboying over that.

 

Did he have to say anything to Steve? Was there a point he had to argue anywhere in what Steve had said? There were other points, things he might have followed up with, other things they might have talked about in light of Steve’s new found – or newly articulated – understanding of Tony…

 

And, here he was, getting carried away with himself again.

 

He remembered, suddenly, the day Nick had come to tell him he hadn’t made it into The Avengers. He even felt the same stab of childlike pain. And yes, Tony hadn’t liked the rejection (ha! That was a narcissism thing! Or was that everyone?) But it had been so much worse than that, that time. Because – God, this was still so embarrassing – because he had _really_ wanted to be one of the Avengers. He wanted so much to be part of something, to be good enough. And he’d got his hopes up. He hadn’t adequately prepared for the crushing disappointment of Natasha’s scathing personal assessment – which, by decree of the great Steve Rogers, was now all bullshit, apparently. But at the time it had been such a sudden knife in his heart. He’d had to put so much into covering that one, finding a joke about his consultancy fees and a stupid demand about Senator Stern, just to salvage some dignity out of the situation.  

 

That had been a lifetime ago, but here he was again. Building this up into a grand gesture on Steve’s part, when really, all Steve had said was that Tony was difficult. And Tony didn’t even know what he’d been getting at.

 

Probably just putting Tony straight over what he’d said to Sam. That was more in keeping with the Steve he knew. He’d probably just meant that Tony shouldn’t presume to know what Steve thought. Just letting Tony know he’d got the measure of him. Which was a disappointing interpretation of things, but better now than later.

 

What concerned Tony more was the fact that he was so much less angry, all of a sudden. Still angry, obviously – for the rest of his life, he was sure, he would only have to think about Steve’s stupid letter and there would be a stab of rage. But it was less, now. It was undeniably, irrefutably less now. And that was a problem.

 

Because Steve hadn’t actually said sorry for anything. They should name that trick after Steve Rogers. Just swans in and says he understands your pain and he wishes things were different and here’s a little rundown of his moral philosophy, and you feel like you’ve got somewhere until after he leaves. Then you realise that he didn’t actually move an inch. Just drew you in. Steve couldn’t be real for a minute, couldn’t just… that annoyed Tony, a bit.

 

But it didn’t mean it hadn’t worked. Again.  

 

And, firstly, Tony hated himself for being so easily placated. He hated the fact that he could feel better about anything that had happened, just because Steve had thrown him a few crumbs of… of whatever that was. You lied to me, you destroyed everything I had ever built, you left me to die on the floor of a bunker in Siberia, but, oh, you think I’m brave? Well, that’s okay then. Was Tony really so desperate for any sort of validation that he’d let anyone treat him like shit, just because they’d deigned to like him a little bit?

 

He was pretty sure that was another sign of narcissism. He should save these up in case anyone else challenged his diagnosis. The next time someone accused him of not being a narcissist-

                _You’re a hard person to be nice to, you know that?_

 

Yeah, well, the next time someone told him that, he’d know how to shut them up.

 

Anyway.

 

There was always the chance it was the other thing. Maybe Tony wasn’t pathetic – maybe he was just a bastard. Maybe being less angry when he thought Steve liked him said something about why he was angry in the first place. Maybe the hurt/rage ratio had been more skewed than he’d thought. Would he have given more concessions if he hadn’t been so upset that Steve didn’t like him? All this time, had he been mad at Steve for things that Clint, and Wanda, and Nat had done?

 

He didn’t think so… but it was so hard to think straight right now.

 

*

 

“Inconspicuous” Steve commented, when he finally came out to meet Tony by his car. A cherry red Audi R8.

“It’s alright, my cover story is I’m Tony Stark”  He answered back. And then, just as Steve was reaching out for the door handle. “Hang on.” Steve paused. So did Tony.

 

No, he should do this.

 

He gestured for Steve to follow him to the trunk. Waited until Steve could see before he opened it.

 

And there, displayed on the lining, was Steve’s shield.

 

Steve just looked at it for a second. It was so familiar that it took him that long to realise it was extraordinary. It being there was extraordinary. He looked up at Tony, who was pointedly keeping his gaze elsewhere.

 

“Tony-”

“It doesn’t count” Tony cut him off.

“You mean I can’t keep it?”

“No, this is just a supervised visitation” Tony answered sarcastically. “Later on you can take it on a trip to the circus. Of course you can keep it. I just meant… I just meant you don’t have to make a big deal out of it.” Tony shrugged, unconvincingly. “And… I only took it in the first place because I was angry. And being angry is not a good reason for doing things, isn’t fair.” And then, before Steve could say anything “Anyway, if we’re going to meet a potential cyber terrorist, one of us should have something to hide behind.”

 

Steve knew he had to say something. But he was momentarily lost for words. And then, as he watched Tony slide into the driver seat, he considered telling him that he’d never thought Tony was a narcissist. He just thought he did. But that would have been a ridiculous thing to say.

 

And anyway, it wouldn’t have counted.

 

They drove three miles in silence. It wasn’t that Steve hadn’t noticed it right away. Tony had just said ‘I was angry’, past tense. Of course Steve had noticed right away. But it took him that long to work out what to do about it. He knew Tony hadn’t said he wasn’t angry anymore – he’d taken great care not to say that, in fact. But if he was even prepared to say it that way, then maybe the situation wasn’t as dire as he’d thought. If there was even a chance that Tony might listen to him, he felt he had to take it. He just couldn’t risk saying the wrong thing.

 

“Are you still angry?” He braved, eventually. He tried to keep his tone as open and even as possible.

“Yup” Tony answered like he was holding his breath. “I’m sure you’re still angry too. Doesn’t give me a right to take your stuff though, that was probably a bit childish.”

“I’m not angry” Steve told him, softly. And Tony breathed a bitter little laugh.

“No, of course you’re not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re never angry, you’re always so polite and reasonable and fair, and you’re only ever saying what needs saying because it’s the right thing to do – it’s a good thing, Cap. Don’t take it personally” But Tony didn’t make it sound like a good thing.

 

And Steve did take it personally.

 

Which is to say, he didn’t take it at all rationally. The nerve Tony had just hit had nothing to do with The Accords or The Avengers or Captain America. It spoke to that nameless burden Steve had always carried. The sickly kid who wasn’t allowed to back down. The poster-boy who wasn’t allowed to be Gay. The World War two solider who saw his friends blown up and wasn’t allowed to get emotional.  The man out of time who had never been allowed to be lonely or lost or confused, not even for a moment. Steve _knew_ what Tony was getting at. But he didn’t have the words. Words were for things you thought about – he had a few things lined up for when The Accords came up, or Bucky, or the jail break. But this was something he’d always _felt_. He’d never had words for this.

 

“That’s a good thing, really?” He demanded, an edge on his voice. And Tony knew he’d started this thing now.

“Probably” He sighed “I get that keeping your temper is the right thing to do. It’s the professional thing to do. It’s just not what friends do. It’s not what equals do” Oh, that had all come out a bit more Oprah than it had sounded in his head.

“You think I think I’m better than you” Steve sighed.

“I’m not saying you aren’t better than me-”

“I don’t think I’m better than you.”

 

There was a pulse of silence. It’s okay, this doesn’t count.

 

“…It’s not even about that. I just mean, you talk to me like I’m some kid you’re mentoring. Like you’re always thinking about how to manage me, responding properly, like you’ll get pulled in front of the PTA if you lose your temper with me.” Tony’s mouth began to outrun his brain “You’re never just talking to me like we’re both pissed off and we’re both hurt and we’re both just people.”

“Are you actually attacking me for _not_ losing my temper with you?” Steve asked, incredulously.

“A bit, yeah.” Tony admitted, exasperated “Because we could never have a real conversation if only I’m in it. It’s like lying, you bravely pretending you have no stake in this. It’s like arguing with a press statement.” Tony let out a breath. What on earth was he talking about? How had they got here?

 

Steve felt his ribs tightening. This was so unfair, he _knew_ this was all so unfair. He tried so hard to do the right thing, it cost him so much to do the right thing. He’d put his own feelings aside his _entire_ life, and he’d never asked for acknowledgement, because that was the right thing – was Tony was telling him off for that? He couldn’t win.

 

He didn’t know that, really, Tony was just begging Steve to let him in. He couldn’t know that, because Tony didn’t know that.

 

“You think I made that choice?” Steve asked “You think it was that way around?”

“You think it’s someone else fault?” Tony frowned.

“You think you know everything I’m thinking” It wasn’t a question “You just assume I’m always sure and I’m never sorry-”

“Because you never say it!” Tony cut in “You have to actually say it, sometimes. Otherwise you just aren’t sorry”

“You know, saying you’re sorry all the time isn’t the greatest of accolades. That could just mean you keep on doing it.”

“And you know that never saying you’re sorry doesn’t mean you weren’t wrong” Tony bit back. “And there’s no point in pretending you aren’t angry because a better man wouldn’t have been angry. And pretending you’re sure doesn’t make it a better plan, and pretending you aren’t thinking anything bad about me won’t make any of it go away.”

 

Steve wanted to say, you just don’t get it. If it weren’t such a cliché… There were times when admitting he was scared would literally have cost lives. There was a time when telling anyone that, still, even _now_ , part of him wanted to grab Tony Stark and kiss him until he shut up, would have gotten him arrested. And there were times when you _weren’t_ just sorry, when it wasn’t that simple. When you knew you’d been given false information and you knew you would have done things differently and you knew people had been hurt, and you _were_ sorry for all of that – but, still, you thought you were right. He could have argued every point he still thought he was right about. But he’d never been allowed to say the other things. Maybe Tony had the luxury of being complicated, but he didn’t. He couldn’t tell Tony why, but he just didn’t. It was just a thing.

 

He was hurt. Deeply, personally hurt. And if Tony was going to judge him for never acting like it, then fine. Let’s see how Tony likes it when Steve stops trying to manage his feelings.

 

“You know you tried to flat out murder two people because you were angry” He told Tony, darkly. He saw the colour run up Tony’s neck. He saw the air get pulled upwards through his body as he tried to make room for that rage. Steve didn’t care. How about that. Captain Steve Rogers, leader of men, didn’t care if this topic _did_ upset Tony Stark.

“You mean the man who killed my parents.”

“Yeah.” And that defiant tone was so not Steve that Tony did a double take. “And I don’t even care why you were so mad at him, I’m not going to bother explaining what Hydra did to him, it doesn’t matter. The fact is, you were angry, so you tried to _kill_ him. And me. And you know what really get’s me? It’s that it was all about me anyway. You weren’t going after Bucky because you were mad about your parents – you were going after Bucky because you were mad at me for not telling you. That’s why you didn’t go for him as soon as you saw the tape. You waited until I told you I knew – and then you went for my best friend. To punish me.”

 

It was like being a step behind what was happening. He saw it hit Tony. He saw that despair come up into his eyes. But he was still so angry, and he just kept talking.

 

“Do you know how many of those cheap late night True Life Crime dramas I’ve seen since we went on the run? They’re all about murders and those murders were always angry. If you’d walked in on Bucky in bed with Pepper, or if Bucky had stolen your life savings, you’d have had every right to be angry – and if you’d killed him for it, you’d be just another murderer. And if you’d killed Bucky because he killed your parents, you’d still be a murderer. But killing him to get back at me is just plain evil.”

 

And then he recognised what he’d seen a few seconds earlier… and then he thought about what he had just said… and he looked at Tony…

 

Oh, God, what had he done?

 

The remorse was instant, and total, and would have lead him to the quickest turnabout in history, if Tony hadn’t been just that bit faster.

 

“And you left me to die on the floor of a bunker in Siberia.”

“Tony I – wait, what?”

“What do you think the Arc reactor _does_ , Steve?” He asked, ominously.

“It…” He did know this. It powered his suit…somehow… It had had something to do with his heart, once…

“So, when you walked away, you didn’t know what you’d done to me?”

“I knew you weren’t…” He was going to say hurt. But, no, that was obviously wrong.

“You knew that no one knew I was there. You knew the suit was down. Just out of interest, how _did_ you think I got home?” His tone was more spiteful now. “You _did_ think about it, didn’t you, Steve?”

“I…”

“How long do you think I was there for, Steve? An hour? A day? A week?”

 

Steve forgot how to breathe.

 

And then he heard the engine die. He thought Tony had just stopped the car in the middle of the road. He was stunned to find they had actually reached their destination – he had no idea how they got there. Tony turned and looked at him, his eyes as cold as they had been in that awful moment

_Did you know?_

 

“Get your shield. You know where to wait.” He told him, his voice dead. And then he got out of the car.  


	4. This is a nightmare

“Did you kill him?”

 

“What?” Steve asked, irritably, while Tony powerwalked past Natasha and through to the living room. Nat raised her eyebrows.

 

“Doctor Munroe” She clarified “Seriously, what happened?”

 

Nothing had happened with Doctor Munroe. Tony’s interview had gone exactly as planned, obviously. You would never have guessed that Tony’s drive there had been anything other than perfectly pleasant. He’d breezed in, bright and charming, and within a few minutes Doctor Munroe had told him everything they needed to know. And Steve had stood, concealed in the shadows of a balcony, and clutched his shield like a security blanket, and wanted to die. If there had been a higher power willing to take his life in exchange for taking all that back-

 

“Steve?”

“It was fine” Steve’s voice was clipped “Tony knows everything. He thinks he can do a... counter virus, thing, I don’t know. It’s fine. He’s worked out how to stop this thing ever happening, from here” Tony had explained it, in an eerily robotic voice, when they were both back in the car. Steve had sat there, paralysed. He hadn’t heard a word. He couldn’t listen, he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t think – nothing would move. And then Tony had just stopped talking, and still. It was like a horrible dream.

 

“So, what _did_ happen?” Natasha pressed.

“I, uh…” It was like trying to think through a fog. There was a film over everything, like he couldn’t quite see. Otherwise, he might have stopped to think why he was even answering her “I called him out for trying to kill Bucky. I called him a murderer. I said he was evil.” There was a high pitched static in his head. He’d called Tony Stark _evil_.

“And I take it he didn’t respond well?” She went on, casual as you like. And Steve just stared at her, disbelieving. Suddenly there were words in his head

_No, Natasha, you’re not getting this_

_Did you hear what I just said?_

_What do you mean, he didn’t take it well?_

But he didn’t say any of them. He just stared at her for a moment and wondered if, when all was said and done, Natasha just wasn’t a very nice person.

“Can you excuse me a moment” He mumbled, and stumbled outside. He had to get outside.

 

He had to breathe.

 

He knew where he’d pulled it from. He remembered it well. There had been a night, a few months ago, when Steve had been feeling particularly bitter. The four of them were crammed into a single room at a barely-legal motel in Florida. The air was stale and the sheets were sticky, and Steve was oh so very tired. Nat and Wanda were lying head to toe on the rancid single bed, Sam was curled awkwardly onto a stained chair and Steve was sitting on the floor, taking his shift on watch.

 

It was three in the morning, and while the others were getting a dizzy waking-rest, he was staring, bleary eyed, at the television. Not really watching it. Murder in Suburbia had come on after some similarly low budget trash, and Steve had paid very little attention to it. He’d picked lines of dialogue at random, let them run through his head, let them go. And he’d heard someone say.

_And I don’t care if he was angry – what my daddy did didn’t warrant the death penalty. A man can’t take another man’s life just cos he’s mad._

And Steve had thought every horrible, unfair thing he’d just said to Tony. That’s where he’d got it from. An uncomfortable night while Steve was feeling sorry for himself, because he was having to live with the choices he’d made.

 

And, even then, he’d known it wasn’t fair.

 

He’d watched the Suburban Murderer of the week whining on about his ‘mitigating circumstances’ and he’d known that Tony was nothing like him. He knew that Tony wasn’t just angry – he was traumatised. He’s snapped under a weight no man could have carried, after watching something more horrible than Steve had seen in all his years of service. He knew that watching a man repeatedly punch your own father in the face until he died topped anything he’d seen at the front. He knew that Tony hadn’t planned what he did, that he would never have gone away and plotted revenge. He’d known, by four o clock that morning, that Tony wasn’t any of the things he’d just called him.

 

But he’d called him that anyway. He’d done it because he was _trying_ to hurt him. Because it was the most spiteful thing he could find in the recesses of his brain.

 

Jesus Christ, who was he?

 

                _You’re a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle._

 

And Steve literally clutched his chest, his heart hurt so much at that memory. It had hurt at the time. But at least then, Steve thought he had an answer. He thought, then, that he was special because he was good. Erskine had chosen him because he would always do that right thing. And now he’d called Tony Stark evil, he’d lost his tempter and been cruel, just like anyone else. So now what was he?

 

It was all well and good Tony telling him to own his mistakes, to be sorry and fallible and honest with him – but Steve _wasn’t_ Tony Stark. Tony Stark was special anyway. Tony Stark was different and brilliant and clever and indomitable. But Steve was just good. That’s all he was, what he was _supposed_ to be.

 

And it wasn’t just Steve that crumbled with that myth. Tony – and Rhodey, and Vision – had done what they did because they believed in the law they were enforcing. Steve’s team just believed in the man. He wasn’t confident that Scott Lang had ever worked out what he was fighting for. But he’d been glad to fight, because he was fighting for Captain America. If Steve wasn’t sure, if Steve had been motivated by anything other than the unquestionable good, then all his friends had been duped. All those people who had counted on him to just be him. And, as it turned out, he _was_ just a lab rat.

 

He was just the man that had left Tony to die on the floor of a bunker in Siberia.

 

His next breath tasted of vomit. He needed water.

 

He stepped back into the kitchen, and he knew something was happening. He saw the back of Sam and Wanda’s heads, as they looked in the direction of the living room. Where was Nat?

 

“And by helping, you mean doing whatever would make Steve’s life easier?” Tony’s voice boomed from the other side of the wall.

 

Oh no.

 

*

 

Sam and Wanda had walked back into the kitchen, faces creased with concern, a few seconds after Steve had stormed out.

“What’s going on there?” Sam whispered, gesturing back to where Tony was silently fuming in the living room. Natasha sealed her lips in a tight line.

“I don’t know” She said, after a beat. “How about I find out?”

 

Because Natasha had always known these ‘it doesn’t count’ rules were bullshit. She was amazed it had taken this long to boil over. These things needed sorting out, and she wasn’t prepared to keep dancing around it just because that’s what Steve and Tony were doing.

 

Although, honestly, she stumbled just a teeny bit when she actually saw Tony. He was sitting on the floor, with the laptop on the coffee table in front of him, typing frantically. Manically. His face was completely frozen. The air around him almost shimmered, the feeling was so palpable .

 

Tony heard her walk in, but it didn’t register. He’d tumbled into tunnel vision like he never had before. All he was thinking about was what he had to do. How soon he could get the hell out of there. All he wanted to do was run, drive, fly, to try to outrun this misery. It was a full minute before Nat gave up waiting for him to acknowledge her.

 

“So, you finally had it out.”

“Oh good, it comes with directors commentary” He responded, his hands not faltering on the keyboard. He didn’t even know where that had come from. There must just be a store of snark in his brain, labelled ‘in case of emergency’. Just in case Steve Rogers ever calls you evil.

 

But Nat just would not be deterred.

 

“Do you think this is helping?” She asked. And then Tony’s frantic typing stalled. Everything stopped.

 

Something had disconnected in Tony’s brain. It happened the moment Steve had said the words ‘plain evil’. Since then, it had been like he’d running on the basic HTML version – all the thoughts were still there, but the complicated connections had dissolved. He was beyond thinking about how to phrase things, what they meant. It really didn’t count, now.  The little stores of dialogue, built up over all those sleepless nights, were now connected directly to his mouth. They just spilled out of him, like blood from an open wound.

 

“And by helping, you mean doing whatever would make Steve’s life easier?” He shouted. Volume control was a function too complicated for him at the moment.

“It’s not to do with Steve-”

“Bull _shit_ ” Tony barked. And Natasha shut up.

 

“You remember when you told me, we played this wrong? What exactly had we played wrong, Nat?” He didn’t give her time to answer “We supported the accords because we thought they were right – what of those reasons had changed after Germany? Or was it just that Steve had thrown his rattle out of the pram _really_ hard? Was it just, we really _can’t_ get Steve to agree to this – because, ultimately, that’s the aim of everything?”

“You think Germany was a win, do you?”

“You think Bucharest was a win?” He shot back, because his brain was just firing things out of his mouth at random now.

“Bucharest?”

“When Steve went to arrest Bucky that first time -  y’know, shortly before Bucky _shot me in the face?_ You remember, when the two of them beat the shit out of a group of special police officers, just before they caused total chaos on the roads – did you know, a woman had a miscarriage after crashing her car in that commotion?”

“What are you talking about?” Natasha demanded.

“Steve, going to arrest Bucky in Bucharest – was that okay?”

“Steve did that because if he didn’t bring Bucky in, the _special police_ would have killed him-”

“And that’s different from Germany, _how?_ ”

 

Natasha went to answer him and found there were no words lined up.

 

“It’s different” She said, in another voice entirely.

“Yeah – it’s different because I got the airport evacuated before Scott Lang started throwing fire trucks around.” Tony spat back. “It’s _different_ because the rest of the Howling commandos weren’t throwing cars at him while he tried to convince Bucky to come in. It’s _different_ because you hadn’t gone with him, pretending to care so much about Bucky and keeping them together and keeping everyone alive, and then just changed your mind for no fucking reason.  Here’s a question – what _should_ I have done?” Again, he didn’t give her the chance to answer him “Let _Ross_ arrest them? Or do you mean I should have just let them go? Do you mean I should – obviously – have broken a law I still believed in, and put myself in the shit, to make Steve’s life easier? _Why_?”

 

The last word had come out like a swear, louder still. Nat physically recoiled from it. Good. Tony’s brain just moved onto the next thing, whether it was connected or not.

 

“You know, I feel I should point out – _I_ never had anyone arrested. None of you were locked up for disagreeing with me, or for not signing the accords, you all could have just fucking retired. You all go on like it was some grand stand, like you were all conscientious objectors – It had nothing to do with the accords! You’ve all just rewritten it so that Steve Rogers was right, like always. But we’d all already respectfully disagreed on the accords, and Clint was off somewhere playing golf. You ended up in jail, because _I –_ based on the information Steve had been good enough to share - thought the Winter Soldier should probably be under observation, and _Steve_ wanted to run off and fall into a trap.”

 

Tony’s head was spinning. There were just so many thoughts pushing to get out of his mouth by now.

 

“Here’s a question – why are you here?” He fixed her with a stare that could’ve stripped paint from a wall.

“Look, Steve-”

“Steve’s upset, obviously, must all jump to action then” Tony bit in “Did he tell you why we had a fight, Natasha? Do you _know_ what he said?” But he could tell from the look on her face, she didn’t “But you naturally assume I’m the one that needs talking to, obviously I’m in the wrong, Steve can’t possibly have been the prick-”

“You can go on past experience” Nat snapped.

“Oh, do we _fuck.”_ He snapped right back. “Really? Then why didn’t Steve tell me what was going oh, eh? Why didn’t Steve just come to me and explain his whole ‘army of super soldiers’ theory before?”

“Because he couldn’t risk-”

“Couldn’t risk _what?_ ” Tony demanded “If we’re going on _past experience_? I have _never_ sold Steve out, never betrayed him – I even went to that fucking bunker once I’d worked out for myself what Steve wouldn’t tell me. Because why? Because I’m the person he couldn’t trust with this, in case I had him arrested, apparently – he trusted S _am!_ ”

 

A thought came into his head like a bullet. Out of nowhere. But, yeah, he’d throw that out there. It didn’t count. Screw it, nothing counted.

 

“Steve had been looking for Bucky for _years_ , and I didn’t know. I have access to all the tracking technology on earth, and I’ve been nothing but loyal, but no, didn’t trust me with that. Told some guy he met on a jog that morning, but not me.”

“And that hurts your feelings, does it?” Natasha spat, acidly.

“Well, no one would give a shit, would they? That’s not the point. The point is, when I decided to work on Ultron, when I decided which trusted friend I would include, that was _evil_. But when Steve decides to work on a little side project, one that involves a super assassin, one that fucked the Avengers more than Ultron ever did, that’s fine. Never mind that if he’d just told me earlier – y’know, like he slaughtered _me_ for not doing – never mind that then I wouldn’t have found out about my parents like that-”

“You _know_ he’s sorry about that-”

“No, I don’t. I know he’s sorry _if_. I know he’s sorry _but_. And I don’t care. I don’t care if he had all the best intentions – I was only doing what I thought was right when I created Ultron. But I don’t see you bursting in on him and demanding he make me feel better over _that_ ”

 

Apparently, he’d tapped a well of feeling. Six years ago, six hours ago, it was all in there now.

 

“You still hate me for getting drunk and putting on the suit, eight years ago – which you encouraged me to do, by the way. And I was sorry, but you never gave me an inch over that. But Steve Rogers brought Scott Lang to that fist fight, and Scott Lang doesn’t have the _first fucking clue_ how my suit works to be crawling around inside it cutting wires – if the suit had just gone dead and dropped out of the sky? If it had been me _and_ Rhodey?”

 

Rhodey’s name was like a blinding white light behind his eyes. Physically painful. He had _so_ much to say to her about Rhodey – too much.

 

“But you know how we know _that_ wasn’t irresponsible? _Because_ Steve Rogers did it. That’s the fucking definition. Bucharest wasn’t irresponsible, bringing Lang in wasn’t irresponsible.”

 

But the white light was still there. He could feel the well running dry.

 

“Yeah, that’s not on anyone else Tony – that’s all in _your_ head.”

“Are you _serious?_ Okay, go on, why is _this_ my fault?” Tony didn’t even know whether he’d said it or thought it. He didn’t recognise the way Natasha’s entire body had changed shape, the alien voice she was using. Hot and cold. Like Ice.

“If you want to know why no one else let’s go of your mistakes, it’s because _you_ don’t. It’s because _you_ obsess over them, you _have_ to make them right. You’re the one that put Steve on a pedestal, not us, and you’re hurt, I get that-”

“Clearly you _don’t-_ ”

“Why don’t you get that people care about you, Tony?”

“Why don’t I get that people care about me?” He repeated, breathless. Aghast. But, as luck would have it, the chunk of dialogue now at the top of his brain was quite a good one, and out it poured. “Here’s a question – why the fuck wouldn’t you?”

“What?”

“Why _wouldn’t_ people care about me? What have I done that is so awful that I should be _grateful_ that my someone, _anyone_ , however much they’ve hurt me, however badly they’ve acted, cares about me?”

_Because you are just plain evil, Tony Stark._

 

He looked at Natasha, but he didn’t see her. She was frozen now, glassy eyed and clearly neutralised, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

 

“You know what? Get _fucked_ Natasha” He spat, and with that, he turned back to his computer.

 

He didn’t hear Natasha stalk away.   

 

All that mattered was getting this done, so that he could get out of here. He wasn’t under house arrest. Once he’d set these programs up, he could go where he liked. He could race away from here at 100 miles per hour, and gives a shit what he left behind.

 

He was done.

 

*

 

Natasha marched back into the kitchen, and stopped dead when she saw Steve staring at her.

 

Wanda and Sam were deliberately keeping their distance, averting their eyes. Like the two younger siblings watching the eldest get told off for something they’d all done. Nat seemed to slip into her role, tilting her chin up like a defiant adolescent. But Steve just kept looking at her.   

 

“He didn’t respond well” Nat told him, eventually, only the slightest waver in her voice. The last time any of had heard her use that voice, she’d just run away from The Hulk

“Sounded like he did pretty well to me” Steve answered, his tone cold. Natasha’s eyes widened. For a long moment no one spoke.

 

“Can you all just give us a minute, please?” Steve asked in that same, cold voice. “There’s like an acre of garden outside, can you just…” and he gestured vaguely towards the door. Sam and Wanda moved immediately. Natasha made a point of holding her ground a second longer before sulking off after them.

 

That left Steve alone in the kitchen, staring towards the abyss.

 

His mind was in a similar sense of disarray. He’d followed Tony’s entire speech from the other side of the wall, and he’s felt every single point like a punch to the gut. He still felt the impact. But he couldn’t do anything with it. He couldn’t fit all of that into his head at once-

 

And he had called Tony Stark evil.

 

That was still every bit as vital, even if a battery of equally vital points had just been fired at him. And his brain had been semi-functional when that had happened. The need to apologise had a chance to take root before his mind turned to mush.

 

He could deal with Tony’s testimonial later. But right now, he _needed_ to apologise.

 

He walked into the living room like a man approaching a wild animal. Tony was just sitting in front of the laptop, staring at it. Not typing. He didn’t look up.

“Tony” His voice sounded wet and heavy. Still, Tony didn’t look up.

“Yes Steve?”

 

It sounded all wrong. Tony’s voice was entirely natural. It didn’t fit his face, or the noise in Steve’s head – it was like listening to a recorded message.

 

“What’re you doing?”

“I am installing a programme that I have just rewritten for purpose, and once that is done I’m going to start running simulations” Same casual tone. Steve had to swallow a mouthful of fluid before he carried on.

“Tony, I am so sorry for what I said” And then Tony looked up at him. Steve saw his face change. That faraway stare melted into a patient, interested expression as Tony turned his head. It was eerie. “It was spiteful, and it was wrong – I don’t think that. You have to know I don’t think that” Because he couldn’t bear to say the words again.

“It’s alright, Steve, I won’t hold it against you. I said it wouldn’t count, and I pushed you to say it, I know I did. So I’m not going to cry about it.” He replied, calmly “And I know I’m not evil. Flawed, yes, but not evil. So that’s all that matters, right?”

 

And Steve thought, Tony was right – this is annoying as hell.

 

He’d always known that Tony’s real armour wasn’t made of metal. He’d watched him put a mask on so many times, for all manner of occasions. He saw him hide his pain behind a cocky grin or a snarky comment – but Steve hadn’t known that he did it, too.

 

Suddenly, he understood what Tony had been saying in the car. Steve understood the distance he’d always put between himself and his feelings, and therefore between himself and everyone else. And he saw how frustrating it was to be on the other side of this distance. On paper Tony was doing everything right. He was being generous and fair minded and calm. He was doing everything Steve had always thought it was his duty to do, and now that he was on the receiving end, he just wanted to grab Tony by the shoulders and shake him. Tony hadn’t meant any of that. Like Steve never meant any of it, but he said it anyway, because it wouldn’t have been right to say what he meant-

_There’s no point pretending you aren’t angry because a better man wouldn’t have been angry_

And, yeah, it was annoying. Because Steve wanted to keep apologising. He wanted to say so much more, but Tony had just graciously silenced him. And Steve had done that every time he’d ever talked to Tony. He really hadn’t known he was doing that.

 

But Tony had known, apparently.

 

The laptop beeped, and Steve lost Tony’s attention for a moment. There was a burst of frantic typing. Steve scrambled for something, any way of starting a conversation. If he could explain that he understood it now, that he was sorry for-

 

Tony stood up and grabbed his jacket.

 

“Where are you going?” Steve asked, frightened.

“Out” Tony breezed, like it should’ve been obvious. “Those simulations will take a few hours to run, and there’s no reason for me to sit here watching them.”

“Are you coming back?”

“Of course – I’ve still got to put the virus together and get it sent out. And once that’s done, we’re done”

 

And he left.

 

Steve kept on staring at the door for a full two minutes. The room around him hummed. He thought, like a scared child, it’s okay, he’s coming back…

 

But what would he say when Tony got back?

 

And as he tried to think of something, when he started thinking about all the things Tony had just said to Natasha, all the things they’d ever said to each other, it was like the ideas themselves were hot. His chest burned, his face burned. He wanted to cry – he needed to cry.

 

And as he melted into tears his thoughts all melted into feelings. He began deliberately indulging all those miserable ideas that keep you crying.

 

_What was I supposed to do? What I did wasn’t what happened. I didn’t know the whole thing was a set up, no one knew, who would have thought of that. Tony hadn’t thought of that – he came to that raft for the same reason I did. He thought an army of super-soldiers was a reason to go behind Ross’ back too. And I know I should have told him, I know it was a mistake – But Tony knows what that’s like! Tony should have told us about Ultron, we accepted he had a mistake – why can’t I just have made a mistake. Tony knows he didn’t keep Ultron from me because he hated me – why does he think I must hate him because I lied to him?_

 

Steve took a deep, shuddering breath. His face was wet and his nose was blocked, and he thought how unlike Captain America he must look. He’d never been allowed to cry. Not even when he was a little boy, because when he was a little boy he’d already been man of the house. A short, skinny kid with a mother to look out for in the middle of a depression. Steve had always had greatness thrust upon him. Even the serum was presented to him as America’s best hope against the Nazi’s – was he, Steve Rogers, _good_ enough to shoulder this power that everyone was relying on? How could he say no? He’d only gone there because he wanted to fight along side every other man – to do the right thing. They’d asked him to be more than that. No one expected Tony Stark to be flawless. No one had ever asked Tony to be more than he was –

 

                _Oh God, poor Tony_

 

No one had ever expected Tony to be good. No one could ever accept that Tony was good. They’d all had an impression of him, and nothing he did would shift it. Tony was right. Tony had never had to be special – but he’d been special anyway. Even with everyone working against him.

 

And Steve loved him. All of him, all the moments.

 

And once he’d breeze back in and saved the day, Tony would disappear. And Steve could spend the rest of his life watching him on the News and seeing his picture in magazines, and never see that beautiful face again…

 

And, of all the thousands of memories, it was Germany that sprang up in his mind. And he thought of Bucharest. He’d given so little thought to Bucharest – it has seemed such a minor detail in such a complicated story. It had been overshadowed by Vienna, and Siberia and… Germany. He remembered Bucharest, now. He remembered the desperate agony of trying to convince Bucky to come in, the panic as Sam ran the countdown in his ear. Trying to be calm when inside he was screaming, wanting to just tell Bucky, _please_ …

                _I’m trying to keep you from tearing the Avengers apart!_

 

Oh, Tony.

 

*

 

Tony had driven nearly a hundred miles before he realised he had no idea where he was.

 

He was full of a strange, tingling numbness. Like his head was full of air, like every time he tried to push a thought into it there was this invisible resistance. He wasn’t even sure why he pulled over when he did.

 

England was a weird place. When he finally took stock of his surroundings he found he was surrounded by trees. He was on a single road carved into woodlands, fringed with wildflowers. He found it hard to believe that the urban heart of London could share an island with this scene, and yet he’d only just been there.

 

Sometimes things just changed like that.

 

He sat there for a while, listening to the birds. Waiting for the numbness to wear off. Eventually it occurred to him that he’d run the full programme. He’d calmly explained his point of view to Sam, he’d torn a strip off of Natasha, he’d tried out being honest _and_ detached with Steve. And none of it had helped.

 

His heart hurt first. Then his head. Then it just rushed through his veins, until everything hurt. His fingers, his lips, his skin. Because he knew, now, that he could never make this better. The problem wasn’t what anyone had done, or what anyone had to say – it was just who he was. He hadn’t been calm or smart enough to keep this all together in the first place. A years planning hadn’t helped him put a case together. He thought all he’d ever wanted was to hear Steve be truly sorry, and he just had. He knew Steve meant it when he said sorry for calling him evil. And it turned out, it hadn’t mattered, because Steve still called him that.  

 

                _Steve still doesn’t like you_

 

He even heard it in Natasha’s voice. She hadn’t even said that… And Tony was nowhere near ready to concede that Natasha had a point on anything. He was quite comfortable hating Natasha for the time being.

 

And then he thought of Pepper. It was like antiseptic on a wound; it both hurt and helped. He had a sudden urge to call her. To reach out to the real world, his life outside of this mess. When you’re out in the forest, you forget that London even exists… if he could just get back to her, to LA, to Ironman and Tony Stark™, he’d remember it existed. He’d remember what was real, that this was just one of those horrible nightmares that felt real at the time. Steve, the safehouse he was in, Tony Stark the Avenger… it was a fantasy.  

 

And that was why he couldn’t call Pepper. Because he wasn’t supposed to be lost in the English countryside, he wasn’t supposed to be having a mental breakdown. If he called her, she’d know. And if she didn’t know, he’d have to lie to her. Like he was already lying to her.

 

                _Like Steve lied to you_

 

Shit. No.

 

No, if he brought Pepper into this then there was no real world. What had happened today was already a cancer, he had to cut it out of his life before it could infect everything else.

 

But it was too late. He’d already seen it. He’d lied to Pepper, he’d kept things from her, to keep her safe, because he thought the mission was more important. He’d come here to deal with a threat that might not have existed, and he hadn’t told Pepper…

 

No, it was different. It had to be different. It was different because he _loved_ Pepper, and-

 

_And that’s why you’re mad at Steve. For not loving you. If you thought he had done it to you for the same reasons you did it to Pepper, you’d forgive him._

 

Jesus Christ, shut _up_ , Natasha.

 

He _did_ have reasons to be angry-

 

He had a right to be angry. But that wasn’t why he was angry. Did that matter?

 

He let out a shaky breath. No, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. The fact was, this _was_ like a cancer. Cutting Steve out of his life would be like cutting out a part of his own body, it would be like losing an arm or a lung or a chunk of his heart. But he had to, because it could never be anything better than what it was.

 

Because Steve had finally apologised. He’d spoken to Tony like a human being, and it hadn’t helped. Tony knew that Steve didn’t think he was evil, and it didn’t help. Because Steve Rogers had still called him that. Steve Rogers, who kept his temper with everyone and found the good in everyone, Steve who had forgiven Natasha for being a KGB assassin and Wanda for joining Hydra and Nick for just generally being a bastard. Tony Stark was beyond even Captain America’s capacity for humanity. Tony Stark could bring the bitterness out of even Steve Rogers.

 

And Tony _had_ made him do it. And then Steve had come to him, and Tony had walked away. Tony _knew_ how hard it was for Steve to open up, he’d called him out over it, and then, when he finally did, Tony walked out on him. Begged him to make himself vulnerable and then slapped him in the face. Because he might not be evil, but he wasn’t good enough for this. He would never be good enough for Steve Rogers, and he couldn’t keep punishing them both for that. This was a sickness.

 

This had to stop.

 


	5. This is it

It was dark by the time Tony got back to the house.

 

The others had, eventually, crept in from the garden and up to their rooms. Steve hadn’t heard a sound from them since.

 

He hadn’t moved from the living room. He’d been thinking. Relentless, confusing, infuriating, agonising thoughts, endless failed attempts to catalogue them.

 

Tony had stood outside the house for fifteen minutes, taking deep breaths. Thinking very helpful thoughts about how bad a time this would be to have an anxiety attack.

 

And then it was time to go inside.

 

Steve heard himself gasp softly when Tony’s key scraped in the lock. There was a flood of relief and a stab of panic at the same time. He’d spent at least an hour just trying to work out how to start. Had he ever come up with something? And then Tony walked in, and sat on the chair directly opposite Steve. He hadn’t expected that. All this time, he’d just been picturing Tony strolling right over to the laptop. There was a little flutter of hope in his chest.

 

Tony didn’t look at him. Tony was giving himself a last minute pep talk, like he did just before he took on Afghan terrorists, or flew into a black hole with a nuclear missile, or tried to blow up a flying city from below. This was going to hurt, and it was going to be hard to keep calm, and there was a chance he might not make it out the other side – but he had no choice. He was going to do this. This was goodbye.

 

“Please, Tony, can I just… talk to you?”

 

Well, that hadn’t even lasted a second. Before he even looked up and saw the desperation in Steve’s eyes, Tony’s heart did something entirely off script. He tried to remember what he wanted.

 

Some part of his brain tried to remind him why it _had_ to be goodbye. A bit like Steve yelling, frantically, that it hadn’t been Bucky’s fault in that Siberian bunker. Entirely pointless. Some feelings are beyond reasoning with. Tony wanted so much to hope. Thinking about it, this was more like a heroin addiction that cancer. Which is why it has to end, his head reminded him – while his heart flew off in another direction entirely.

 

Which one was it that controlled your mouth, anyway?

 

“Okay” Tony whispered. He saw Steve’s shoulders soften, and he realised how nervous Steve was.

“I am sorry Tony.”

“I know,” Tony sighed. Because he did know. This wasn’t the cold, distanced concessions of earlier. But Steve knew, he was still doing it. Giving up. And Steve knew he couldn’t let that happen.

“I don’t just mean about what I said in the car. I mean about a lot of things.”

 

And, instinctively, Tony tried to steel himself against it. Tried to protect himself in advance. He thought of his hope before Nick told him Tony’s personality had kept him out of The Avengers. He thought, specifically, of the hope he felt when Steve had said to him ‘I’m not saying it’s impossible. There would have to be safeguards’. And then, an hour later, he’d turned the entire team against him. He warned himself not to get hurt again. Oh, if only it were that easy.

 

“I’m sorry too.” Tony breathed.

“Hang on, Tony, no.” Steve shook his head. He saw Tony shrink back and there was a little flicker of doubt. Part of him that just wanted to placate and appease Tony at all costs. But if there was one thing Steve knew how to do, it was to talk over basic instincts. Especially when it came to Tony. “I can’t let you do that”

“Do what?”

“Jump in and take the blame like…a man jumping on a grenade…” Steve sighed.

“I’m not taking the blame” Tony said seriously. “I’m just saying, I know I made mistakes. You did tell me about Zemo, at the airport, and I ignored you. I didn’t do a great job of selling the accords. I do admit when I make mistakes, remember?”

“And I know why you didn’t listen to me at the airport, because when I was pleading with Bucky to come in that first time, I wouldn’t have listened to him either. I would’ve done what you did – and you’re right, I never thought of it that way, and I never thought about… and you’re right, you’re just right. I should have just told you earlier. And you’re right, it _wasn’t_ about the accords. And…” He sighed. Buying a few more seconds before he took that leap “…and even the things I can’t apologise for, it doesn’t mean I think you were wrong”

 

He saw the slightly wounded look on Tony’s face, in the microsecond it took Tony to cover it up. Steve nearly folded. But he knew, now, it _really_ counted. This was the last chance before Tony disappeared forever. And when something counts that much, it’s exactly the same as it not counting at all. Steve didn’t care if he embarrassed himself, of showed too much of himself, he didn’t have anything more to lose.

 

“I’m really not making excuses – I’m just trying to explain. Because I don’t think it’s the way you think it is, and I just need you to know that, just… I don’t mean that I’m not sorry, I know this makes me look like I’m not saying sorry, and part of me still thinks I should just say that… but then I’m doing it again. Then I’m giving you the … press release and…. I think you’re owed an explanation. And I want you to know what I’m really sorry for, and I think I get what you were saying before. I think, I mean, is this what you meant? Do you want to know?”

 

Tony didn’t know he was holding his breath. It was like being in the pregnant pause at the end of a gameshow. It was possible that Steve really was going to have a proper conversation with him, it was even possible that it would make things better. Right now, it was all still to happen. Which meant it was also possible that Steve was going to do what he always did, hiding behind an abstract moral justification and good intentions, and it was still possible that it would break Tony’s foolish heart all over again. And this was the moment he found out.

 

“Yeah. I want to know” He nodded.

 

Steve exhaled slowly. Now or never.

 

“I know that we were wrong about the super-soldiers in Siberia. And if I’d known that, obviously I would never have gone. And if the same thing happened again, obviously I would tell you, and I would check it more, I know all of that was stupid, and irresponsible. And, honestly, if it hadn’t been for getting carried away with that – I _was_ bringing Bucky in, after… Bucharest. And, even if Zemo had got as far as setting him off then, I really think I still… And then he said that Zemo asked about Siberia, and I just put two and two together and got five, and… If you think I straight out chose Bucky over you, it wasn’t like that in my head. And if you think I took the team on a crusade against you, I didn’t. I don’t know if what I did do was better of worse, but if I owe you an explanation…”

 

Steve could feel the floor beneath him getting thinner. He knew that talking about Bucky was potentially explosive. But there was no avoiding it. That was what the whole thing had been about.

 

“I never thought I’d end up tearing down everything you’d built. I know I should have, but I didn’t. I knew I’d hurt you, but I thought it was that or Bucky’s life. It isn’t like for like. And if I had to hurt Bucky’s feelings to save your life, I would. And, on top of that, I really did think there was a global catastrophe to prevent.”

 

Tony thought about every jump he’d ever had to make, every shot that absolutely had to land, every time that the lives of millions had rested on his shoulders – this next move was just as nerve wracking. It felt the same.

 

“And if it had been like for like?”

 

Because he was well beyond caring if he looked needy anymore. He needed to know if Steve would lie to him. And Steve looked down, which Tony took as a bad sign, and hesitated, which Tony _knew_ was a bad sign, and said-

“Then I’d have to save Bucky”

 

He sounded miserable when he said it – because he was. It was one of many nightmare scenarios he’d been dreading, one of the impossible questions. He knew that no good could come from defending Bucky to Tony, and he knew he couldn’t lie. He also knew he couldn’t tell the truth. He couldn’t tell Tony where he really sat in Steve’s affections, that his place was different to Bucky’s but important just the same. He couldn’t have killed Bucky for Tony Stark – but he would have died for him. In a heartbeat. But he couldn’t tell him that. And he couldn’t tell him that’d he’d abandon Bucky next time, because he wouldn’t. So now it must surely be over. There could only be a horrible, personal argument between this and Tony walking out forever.

 

Little did he know, it had actually been the right answer. Because never in his wildest dreams had Tony thought Steve would choose him over Bucky. Yeah, there was a little stab of childish hurt, but he could easily put that in context. He knew that was unreasonable. After all, he didn’t even think Steve liked him. He’d always assumed Steve would pick Sam or even Natasha over him, if he’d only had time to grab one person. But if Steve was really prepared to be honest about that, now… that was far more important than any anger he’d ever felt over Bucky. That meant maybe, just maybe, it was worth saying something.

 

Because Tony’s head and his heart couldn’t decide whether this had to be the end or not. But even if it was. If Steve was prepared to talk to him properly, then maybe it was worth doing this anyway. Even if it was for one last time.

 

“You do this thing…” He began, and Steve looked up, suddenly. He’d been preparing for a lot of reactions, but calmly carrying on the conversation wasn’t one of them.  “You rewrite history. You define things by however you’re feeling at the time, because if it feels right then it’s moral. Or something. Like Bucharest, and Germany, excellent example. It was so obviously the moral thing, being on either side of that, when you were on it. You do it all the time. Even when we first met. You called me out for running a secret scan on Fury’s files, because insubordination felt wrong to you then. So it was a moral crime and you had no problem sharing your opinion. And literally two seconds later you were breaking into Furys weapon locker. Because it had become so moral then. And I wouldn’t mind you changing your mind if you said you’d changed your mind. If you said sorry once in a while. But, honestly, there’s no being a good man for you because there’s no predicting what the right thing is going to be.”

“I know, I should have said sorry more. A lot more.” Steve told him. “But, I just… It really did feel like it at the time-”

“But that’s the point I’m making!” Tony answered, exasperated “I never thought you were deliberately being cruel. That’s not the only crime anyone has to answer to. Good intentions don’t-”

“No, Tony, that’s not what I mean.” Steve shook his head. How the hell was he going to explain what he meant?

 

This was flying a bit close to the sun. In theory, Steve could make this point independently of… that. But they were connected in Steve’s head. And as much as he wanted to be honest now, as important as it was, it _obviously_ didn’t include…that.

 

“It’s just that, in the forties, everything was much more black and white. There was us and the Nazis, The American Way of life. One type of family, one way to be a good Christian… and, it wasn’t right, I know that, it was just cramming things into shapes to make them easier – and, so much of the time, I knew it then”

 

His heart beat harder, thinking of just how well he knew. That basic instinct he’d always had, contrary to the whole world. But it was okay, only he knew what he was talking about. He could do this.

 

“So I made all these choices about right and wrong, and sometimes it meant taking a stand, but a lot of the time…” his tongue felt dry. A lot of the time, you believe them. You believe you’d be a pervert if you said what you were thinking, so you said what you were ‘supposed to’ instead. You had to have a moral code when you couldn’t trust your instincts. And if he couldn’t say that… he could see Tony frowning, he knew Tony didn’t understand what he was saying. He took a breath and regrouped. “It’s just, I went from a world I understood, even if I didn’t always agree with it – I knew what I didn’t agree with, and why. And then everything changed. Things no one else even thinks of. The way people think… So you do it again, you try to think what the right thing is now – but then it changes again, because you don’t have any constants anymore. And then it changes again and again – you say you don’t know how to be a good person for me, but now neither do I. It’s like being mad,  I look at things, and I see the moral option, and I look again…”

 

And Tony tried not to feel overwhelmingly sorry for Steve then. He realised, he’d never really thought about what Steve had been though. He thought he had. He thought the words ‘imagine losing everyone you’d ever known, everything you’d thought of as familiar’. But he wasn’t sure he’d ever done it. And, if he had, he’d thought about it like moving to another country – his head spun now, thinking about how terrifying that must _really_ have been. How well Steve had dealt with it, and how little credit Tony had ever given him.

_The heart would like to remind you that this is an excellent opportunity to forgive Steve completely and apologise unreservedly for being the real bastard here, like you know you’re dying to do._

But no. He could apologise to Steve for that later. This was too important to let go for any reason, right now.

 

“Is that really how you’re feeling, or is that just you rewriting history again?”

“What do you mean?” Steve sounded hurt. And Tony filled his lungs before he continued.

“I'm glad you're back at the compound. I don't like the idea of you rattling around a mansion by yourself.” He squinted at Steve then, hoping to say, _how very fucking dare you?_ “We all need family. The Avengers are yours, maybe more so than mine. I've been on my own since I was 18. I never really fit in anywhere, even in the army. My faith's in people, I guess. Individuals. And I'm happy to say that, for the most part, they haven't let me down.” Because, of course, he knew it by heart. And, as he recited it in a deliberately condescending tone, he watched Steve recognise it, and then really hear it, and then start to cringe. “Which is why I can't let them down either. Locks can be replaced, but maybe they shouldn't. I know I hurt you, Tony. I guess I thought by not telling you about your parents I was sparing you, but I can see now that I was really sparing myself, and I'm sorry. Hopefully one day you can understand. I wish we agreed on the Accords, I really do. I know you're doing what you believe in, and that's all any of us can do. That's all any of us should... So no matter what, I promise you, if you need us - if you need me - I'll be there.” And then he fixed Steve with an accusatory look.

 

By now Steve’s guts were clenching. God, had he really written that? And, yeah, he would never have been able to write what he really meant. And he knew he’d been pretending in that letter, even when he wrote it, he knew he’d always have to pretend, to an extent – but, God, he hadn’t thought it had been that bad. He would never have written that now.

 

“Are you honestly saying that, when you wrote that, you were confused and remorseful? You’re honestly telling me that’s a front?” Tony went on, sceptically. And Steve made himself think about it before he answered

“I am saying that, when I wrote that… I wasn’t as sorry as I am now, no. But I was a lot more sorry than I sounded.”

“It was the ‘I guess’ that did it for me” It was a side point, but if this was the last conversation he ever had, Tony was going to say a few things about that fucking letter “So casual”

“Nervous” Steve corrected “Stupid.”

 

Tony paused for a second. Nervous hadn’t occurred to him. Did he believe that?

 

“I’ll be honest with you, Steve, I never felt like you were thinking of me when you wrote it. I felt like you were thinking of yourself, like a politician is when they write a letter to the newspaper. I feel like, if you’d been thinking about me, you’d never have said something as crass as ‘we all need family’ after what had just happened to mine.” He saw Steve swallow hard, and there was a guilty little victory kick in his chest “And to say the Avengers were maybe my family more than yours – as though the obvious assumption was that they belonged to you, and you were being good enough to question that. I mean, as it turns out, yeah, obviously they were more yours….”

 

Oh dear. There was a hint of bitterness on his tongue. Tony’s turn to swallow.

 

“It’s not that I wasn’t thinking about you” Steve whispered, blushing furiously. Wondering if it was even possible to explain just half of what he was thinking about Tony. “It’s just, what I was thinking was all wrong…”

“If you were sorry at the time, why didn’t you say so?” Tony intervened in the end, trying not to get frustrated.

“I said I was sorry-”

“No, you didn’t!” Tony cut in “You said, I’m sorry – _hopefully one day you can understand_. Do  you not see the difference?” He let go of a frustrated breath. “Can you imagine me saying, I’m sorry for Ultron, hopefully one day you can understand?” And he put on a superior tone, just to make the point.

“I didn’t mean it that way, even then-”

“Yes. You did.” Tony challenged him. And Steve took a breath, and he tried to think back, tried to unknow everything he’d discovered in the last two days. Tried to empathise with a man that didn’t see things that were clearly in front of his eyes. He tried to be fair – _had_ he meant it that way?

“Okay. So.” Steve said on a downward breath “At the time, I really did think it was more about the accords than I do now, and I hadn’t thought about your side of things in Germany – and now that I have, it’s hard to think… But… what I mean is, just because there are things I wish you understood, it doesn’t mean I wasn’t really sorry for the stuff I was sorry for. I wasn’t saying it in that tone of voice”

 

“What do you wish I understood?”

“Well, when I wrote that I wished you understood my objection to the Accords, and now I don’t really care because you’re right, it wasn’t about that…” Steve began with the safest one. The one he didn’t have to talk about. Next best bet, the thing he’d changed his mind about “I _thought_ I wished you understood why I didn’t tell you about your parents, and actually I just understand, now. And I am so sorry about that, Tony. Not sorry if, not sorry but, just sorry…”

 

But his tone of voice had betrayed him. It was so obvious Steve was dreading what he had to say next, that Tony couldn’t give enough attention to what he’d just said. Up last was the point Steve still wished Tony understood.

 

“I still wish you understood about Bucky”

 

Tony had guessed it was coming. He still wanted to throw up.

 

“What do you wish I understood about Bucky?”

“It’s just… I know we can’t ever get past this, because you hate Bucky, and I get it, and I don’t hate Bucky, and I know you can’t get that... I know, to you, it’s just like I’ve chosen the monster that murdered your parents…”

“Actually, it isn’t that” Tony told him, coolly, even though it was still partly that. “If we pretend for a minute that it wasn’t Bucky. If it was Peggy, if it was your treasured Childhood toy, whatever it had been – you chose something _you_ loved over everyone else. And you went to ridiculous lengths and made stupid choices just because of _how much_ you loved him. Do you not see the selfishness in that?”

 

Steve just frowned for a second. Giving everything you had for someone you loved was selfish? Sure, why not. And Tony Stark wasn’t a narcissist anymore, and Cap wasn’t a good guy, and they hadn’t fallen out over The Accords. Steve didn’t feel confident arguing anything anymore.

 

“Would you go to those lengths for Rhodey? For Pepper?”

“In a heartbeat” Tony answered quickly “The only difference is, I know that’s selfish. I know where I sit on the scale. I give one day a month to corporate charity, and I’d bomb a village for Pepper” and he demonstrated with his hand on an imaginary yardstick “I’m not pretending to be anyone’s moral compass, and when someone get’s hurt because of my selfishness, I at least have the decency to be very, very sorry as opposed to putting the onus on them to understand.”

 

And suddenly, Steve understood something vital.

 

A single, random observation just flowered into a moment of enlightenment – there was no other word for it. He knew he could explain it, he _knew_ , if he could just say it before he lost it…

 

“I know why I always thought you were a narcissist” He saw Tony pull a face, “no, it’s my fault, I’m just saying, I get it now. Because you’ve just said ‘I give one corporate day a month to charity’ like you’re bragging, and the only reason I know you aren’t is because I _know_ how much else you do. If I hadn’t been to a hundred charity events with you, I’d have taken it at face value. I used to think you told us about every single thing you did, because the only things I knew you did were the ones you told us about.”

 

Steve had begun to talk faster now, more animated. Tony knew there would be no interrupting him now even he wanted to

 

“I look at things, and I work them out, but I don’t think about what else there might be, or that someone might be lying, or that someone might be hiding something. At least, not enough. And I don’t always think that there might have been a whole historical movement, or a new invention or a completely different way – I have spent the last… Jesus, ten years at least, feeling like I’m in some sort of trap, there’s always a mole or a Hydra conspiracy or whatever psycho Zemo was, just messing with reality, and I didn’t understand it anyway…”

 

Tony felt another stab of agonising guilt. How had he ever seen Steve’s life as anything other than a total headfuck? Tony had been shocked enough when he found out SHIELD had been compromised – but SHIELD had been Steve’s whole life. Tony saw that now. His life from before had been stripped from him in a second, and he’d had to relearn and rethink and reprioritise everything – and he’d been totally alone when he did it. There had only been SHIELD to provide any sort of structure, any platform to build a new understanding. And then that had been torn apart just as brutally, and Steve had learned that all his new understanding had been built on lies. And then Ultron, and then Zemo, and then and then and then… Steve’s life had so obviously been one traumatic blow after another that Tony could not _believe_ he’d never noticed… because Steve had never said…

 

“But that’s not the point” Steve decided, just as Tony was finally beginning to see it had been the point, all along “The point is, you do it on purpose. And I even know why – I know I do, because I do the same thing. Well, I do a different thing, but it’s the same thing. And the same thing happened to you.”

 

Tony raised one eyebrow. It had been forty-eight hours of reality-altering revelations, but he found it hard to believe that he and Steve were in any way alike. They were polar opposites, opposing team Captains – or not even a captain, in his case. Tony wasn’t even Steve’s equal in that regard. But Steve looked confident. Steve was confident.

 

“I don’t know which way around it was with you – whether someone instantly expected you to succeed, or someone really expected you to fail, but I know it’s expectations. When people expect something so specific, and expect it so much, you have to really do it or really reject it. You can’t half meet an expectation like that. And either you never thought you could live up to their high expectations, or you made it your business to go even further than their low expectations, but you’ve spent your whole life _pretending_ to be bad. Even when you’re pretending to pretend to be good. You said the good things so no one would compliment you – but never the _really_ good things, just enough so that everyone said you were arrogant – and you said the bad things at every opportunity, like you accepted them.”

 

Tony was curling into himself, he was so uncomfortable with this personality assessment. But he didn’t want Steve to stop.

 

“And then people believe you, you hide things and then they stop looking, they find things you already told them were there, until everyone believes it… I was never allowed to be complicated. Like you aren’t, not really. They call you ‘complicated’ like a brand term, but they still put everything you do into a Tony Stark mould. Everyone wanted me to be good, Tony, everyone. And yeah, I did try to make everything I did fit that, even in my own head, because I had to meet that expectation. I pretended to be sure the same way you pretend to be selfish – because it was expected, because I had a caricature to make that fit. And then everyone else started doing it for me. And then people were doing things _because_ they believed in me, and it was even more important that I became the person they believed in. I mean, it isn’t even an option for me to change my mind over the accords, because all my friends scarified so much on that and how could I make it so they scarified it for nothing?”

 

And Tony might have blown it all and said something then. He could have asked if Steve _had_ changed his mind on the Accords. He could have challenged Steve’s assertion that he _couldn’t_ change his mind. The words were in his head. But Steve had barely paused for breath. There wasn’t space for Tony to leap in and protect himself.

 

“And I know, I know it doesn’t work like that, I know pretending it’s right doesn’t make it right, but I still feel responsible. Because everyone told me I was responsible and I believed them, so I told everyone I was responsible, and they believed me. Because I am sorry, and I am unsure, and I am tricked and manipulated and hurt, all the time – it’s just no one sees it, so it isn’t there. And it isn’t there because I’ve never shown it, and I’ve never shown it because it isn’t there. And now, no one ever assumes that I just wasn’t good enough. Even if I didn’t say it, they say it for me, and then I have to say it, because they did. Like you couldn’t have defended yourself over Ultron, even a little bit. Because you have to pick something and go with it, if you aren’t allowed to be complicated, if you’re _supposed_ to be something.”  

 

And Tony realised, he really couldn’t tell which one of them Steve was talking about.

 

“No one ever thinks that I just didn’t think of it, that I just don’t understand how things work or I just panicked, and if I were to say that they wouldn’t believe me anyway. They think I’m an ideologue, so I can only make one sort of mistake – and everyone believes that one, everyone is waiting for that one. Everyone is always looking for a little bit of green in the blue of my eyes – they don’t want me to be sorry, they want me to be _wrong._ Because they think I think I’m never wrong”

 

And it wasn’t the idea that he was, in any way, like Steve Rogers. It was the blinding revelation that Steve Rogers might, in some small way, be like him. Tony thought of all the times he’d stood in front of someone and done exactly what Steve was doing. The apologies to Pepper, to Rhodey – to Steve, on occasion. He knew that feeling so well, but it hadn’t occurred to him that he was looking right at it. Because Steve was right. Tony had never really empathised with him, because he’d always thought of Steve as something other. A different species, some higher form of life. He _had_ always expected more of him – but, worse, he’d always given that much less to him. Less thought, less consideration, less understanding. Now he looked at Steve, and he saw it so clearly. He saw every apology he ever made over Ultron, every time Pepper took him back. All the vulnerability that Steve had never shown – and that Tony had never looked for.

 

In that second, Tony saw something of himself in Steve for the first time ever. And that was the second that he stopped expecting Steve to be perfect. The second he recognised that he had always expected Steve to be perfect, even while he was telling him he wasn’t. The second he finally _wanted_ to understand Steve’s point of view, because he’d always wanted people to understand his – and he saw, at last, that it really wasn’t that different.

 

  But Steve wouldn’t shut up, even for a second.

 

“I have spent my whole life pretending too. Pretending to be tall, pretending to be straight, pretending to be brave, pretending to understand half of what you’re all talking about.” Tony heard it, obviously. He thought Steve must’ve meant something else. But Steve really didn’t hear it.

 

Because Steve had never had the floor like this. He was only given the floor for things Captain America would say. But circumstances had forced him to step into this, and circumstances had taken away all his usual priorities and then he’d just… and now he was talking. Just talking like a normal person, like a real person. Talking like someone who hadn’t just landed on the planet, a stranger to everyone, with no one he trusted and no one who owed him. And it really _did_ help; it really was easier to order his thoughts, they made more sense when he heard them out loud. He got carried away with it. He just talked. And talked. And talked.

 

“And it wasn’t like not pretending was an option. If I’d been honest with Hydra, they’d have won the war. If I’d told anyone I was gay, they’d have literally arrested me, if I’d ever admitted I was scared when I was supposed to...be…”

 

He heard it then. And, he knew, Tony had heard it that time.

 

And all those words were just wiped from his head. All those grand revelations on himself and Tony and life, whoosh, gone. Nothing.

 

_You’ve just told Tony Stark that you’re Gay._

 

Okay. That really couldn’t be the priority. He did remember that this was the most important conversation he would ever have, he remembered thinking that nothing could get in the way of this, so, obviously, he couldn’t think about…that.

 

_That means you actually are Gay, now._

 

“Okay, sorry…” Steve knew he had to ignore it. He knew he had to keep on talking, he had to say the things he was going to say…

 

They weren’t there.

 

“Steve-”

 

“Sorry” Steve cut him off. He _had_ to cut him off. They couldn’t start talking about it, Steve _had_ to talk over it… but he couldn’t think of a single thing to say “I’m so sorry, please, could you just give me one minute?” He looked at Tony, just briefly, because he couldn’t bear to hold his gaze. He tried to balance the need to keep Tony here, and the need to get away _now_. “Can you just…stay here, a minute. Please, don’t go anywhere…”

 

And without waiting for an answer, he walked up the stairs to his room.

 


	6. Just this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a description of an anxiety attack.

Tony was staring at the space where Steve had been standing.

 

Or the space where someone had been standing. Because the man that Tony had just seen, really seen, wasn’t Steve. The man he’d been looking at was just a man, just like Tony. He was confused, and sorry, and misunderstood, and hurt – and trying. Like Tony. That hadn’t been a national icon, forever sure and eternally moral and permanently calm… Shit. That had been Steve. That had always been Steve, and the poster boy that Tony had been arguing with for years had never been real. He was angry with a figment of his own imagination.

 

Tony _had_ been angry with an ideologue. He’d been angry with stubborn, self-righteous, unquestioning Captain America – and he’d been angry with him for not being perfect. He’d spent a year plotting ways to say, ha, _you_ fucked up! As though, obviously, Steve wasn’t allowed to.

 

Also, Steve was gay, apparently.

 

But Tony didn’t snag on that in the way Steve had expected him to. Which was not to say that, on any other day, he wouldn’t have been floored by that revelation. But, on this day, it wasn’t even in the top five. Because, basically, Steve had been right – it wasn’t the same for Tony. When Tony did think about it, he’d realise why that was such a big deal, but he’d never understand it. Tony was born in a different era, and to him it wasn’t obviously more important than any of the other shocks.

 

Like the fact that Tony might well be angry at Steve Rogers, the real one - but if he was, it was anger at a person who’d made a mistake. That was so different. Steve’s flaws looked so different to Tony now that he was trying to understand them.

 

And, suddenly, the good qualities in Steve seemed different too. Tony realised, Steve was so much more special than he’d ever known – _because_ he was just an ordinary man. Tony had always taken Steve’s strengths for granted. Steve would take a stand, Steve would help the vulnerable, Steve would never chicken out. All this time, he’d thought those were qualities Steve just _had_ , like blue eyes and blonde hair. He’d never thought of them as choices. Choices Steve had to make every time. Tony had never bothered to think about how much easier it might have been to go along with it, how much he might have liked to walk away, how scared Steve might have been when he was being so brave… And, when he really thought of Steve as a person for the first time ever, Tony realised-

 

He knew that look.

 

The look on Steve’s face, the one that had suddenly washed over him just before he disappeared. Tony knew exactly how that look felt.

 

He jumped up and raced up the stairs.

 

*

 

Steve had just reached his door when he started to feel like something was terribly wrong.

 

He still couldn’t think about all the things that must be terribly wrong. He couldn’t make himself think anything. But he felt, he _knew_ , something terrible had just happened. No. Was about to happen. Was happening…

 

He closed the door with a snap and managed one step before he sank to the floor. His heart was pounding painfully in his chest now, and in his head, and every breath he took wasn’t quite enough, he couldn’t keep up with it, he couldn’t breathe.

 

It wasn’t just that Steve had accidentally outed himself. In isolation, that would have been terrifying and uncomfortable, but it wouldn’t have rivalled the panic of New York or Sokovia or Siberia. But along with everything else. Having been so honest with Tony about everything else. Understanding everything differently – _again_. Everything changing its shape and meaning in front of his eyes, again. He wasn’t what he thought he was, he hadn’t played the part he thought he had. He’d just changed his whole identity, in front of himself as well as Tony – Tony Stark, of all people. He’d accidentally outed himself to Tony Stark. Tony, who he suddenly saw so differently even though he was so obviously what he’d always been. Tony, who was in the living room right now and if Steve didn’t do something quickly something terrible would happen…

 

He wasn’t thinking any of that, but it was all still there. The wordless panic of all these sudden _revelations_. He felt trapped in his own head, desperate to escape, wanting to run away from this room as fast as he’d run to it. There was nowhere to run. He couldn’t move. And then he felt his throat begin to tighten, and there was a sudden step change. Panic of a different kind. It was like that seizing feeling you get in your chest when your foot slips, but it wasn’t just a second, it stayed there, it wouldn’t move. Oh God, he was dying. Was he dying? What was he dying _of_ -

 

“Breathe, Steve.”

 

Steve felt the warm weight of Tony’s hand on his back, like an anchor.

 

“If you think about it, you can do it. Really think, how do you breathe?”

 

Steve didn’t even know he’d heard him, but still, he did it. He focused on breathing. He really thought about it. He made himself fill his lungs. His chest resisted, like it was stiff and tight, but he forced it. He made himself take a deep breath, and another, until something finally gave.

 

“I promise, everything is going to be okay. You have to trust me, I already know.”

 

Tony sounded so calm. So kind. Steve did trust him. He relaxed his shoulders just slightly, and felt his hands start to shake

 

“It’s okay, close your eyes. It’s alright.”

 

And Steve did, and suddenly there was less. Less light, less colour, less world moving in and out of focus around him. There was just breathing, and the sound of Tony’s voice.

 

“It’s okay. You’re okay”

 

After an endless moment, Steve got to some sense of where he was. He opened his eyes, and everything seemed bright and washed out. He took another deep breath, and with it came some relief. And then he felt heavy, like his whole body was being pulled downwards. Down, through the floor, through the world, into sleep…

 

“You with me Steve?”

“Yeah.” He answered automatically. His voice felt strange in his mouth. He made himself lift his head and the room seemed to move with him. Tony was sitting in the floor beside Steve now, almost an arms-length away. Steve could feel him there, could see him out of the corner of his eye, but didn’t dare turn to look.

“I know you feel like you’re dying, but you have to trust me, you will be okay.”

“Why do I feel like I’m dying?” Steve asked without thinking.

“It’s called an anxiety attack” Tony sounded calm and interested, like a teacher explaining a topic they knew well. “It’s what happens when your body kick starts the fight or flight response at the wrong time. What you are feeling is a sudden surge of adrenaline. Which, I bet if you think about it, makes sense.”

“Yeah…” Steve whispered. The panic was beginning to ebb away, and a bodily exhaustion was taking its place.

“When it stops, you can feel empty, and tired, or tearful, but it all passes. It’s normal, and it can’t hurt you.” Tony kept talking, because he knew, Steve needed him to keep talking. Two hours ago, Tony would have said it was impossible that Steve could have an anxiety attack … which, whatever way you looked at it, was a ridiculous thing to have ever thought. And he wouldn’t have known what to say if it had happened, two hours ago. But now Tony just knew to treat Steve like a human being. Weirdly, it was… easy. Why had he ever assumed there would be a different way for Steve, over everyone else? Now, he looked at Steve, still on his knees, his breathing still too heavy, and why on earth wouldn’t you just say “Come, sit.”

 

Steve just did as he was told, folding his legs underneath him and bringing his arms around himself on instinct. Tony had a sudden urge to lurch forward and hug him, but he knew from experience that it was actually the last thing Steve needed right now. Steve needed space, and air, and time, and constant, calm reassurance to focus on. Obviously.

 

“Sorry” Steve mumbled after a moment. Ah, Tony thought, the creeping shame. The moment where the world you’d just faded out of becomes horribly real again, and you could eat yourself out of sheer embarrassment. Tony knew Steve didn’t know what he was saying sorry for yet, and that was fine. Tony understood this feeling.

 

“With me, if the attack doesn’t last too long the after effects don’t either – I don’t know if that’s everyone.”  Tony told him, mainly so that he could mention-

“You’ve had this?”

“Oh, all the time” Tony responded nonchalantly. “At some truly unfortunate moments, let me tell you.”

“Jesus, this is _awful_ ” Steve spoke with a sympathetic look on his face.

“Oh, mine aren’t all as bad as that was” Tony reassured him, so that Steve wouldn’t feel sorry for him. “The first one was the worst by far, because _I_ thought I was dying, too – I literally jumped into the suit and asked Jarvis if I’d been poisoned.” And Steve felt himself smile. The simple human pleasure of relating to the experience of another.

“I’m still sorry, I had no idea.”

“Well, why would you, if you’ve never had one?” Tony answered, kindly, and Steve finally looked directly at him. There was a warmth under his skin, and then he remembered.

 

He’d just told Tony he was gay.

 

“Is there any chance we could forget what I just said?” He asked before he could panic again.

“What, all of it?”

“What, no. No.” Steve shook his head. He couldn’t really remember it, but he knew he’d finally said some important things before… that. “No, I mean, that last thing…” the blood rushed to Steve’s face, and he realised the stupidity of what he was saying. And Tony watched him, and realised the importance of what Steve was saying.

 

He was at least sensitive enough to work out what Steve was talking about. He did know why it would have been a big deal, even if he didn’t really feel it. And, now that he’d stopped trying to work out what any of this meant in the language of Steve Rogers, he was just looking at someone who clearly felt scared, and ashamed, and deeply uncomfortable. Tony had just learned Steve’s deepest secret, and even though he didn’t really understand why it _should_ have been a secret, he knew the vulnerability and regret a person felt in moments like that.

 

There was that people-pleasing impulse again. The one that never stops to think. He wanted, so much, to make Steve feel better over that. This one was simple. The idea that Steve would feel ashamed of being gay, the idea that Steve was scared of Tony knowing, was immediately and overwhelmingly sympathetic. He wanted to say, ‘It’s okay’. But just saying it wouldn’t have helped. And trying to have a conversation with Steve about his sexuality was the exact opposite of what he’d asked for, and wasn’t Tony’s place. And just telling Steve he would forget all about it was so obviously wrong…

 

Oh, what the hell.

 

“Okay. Well, as long as we’re saying things that everyone promises not to remember – if you _promise_ not to remember-” And there was a sudden, sharp pain in his chest, some primordial defence against what he was about to do, but he just talked over it “-I’m in love with you”

 

It was like it just bounced off the outside of Steve’s head. He felt it, and then-

“What?”

 

Tony felt a stab of panic. It occurred to him, too late, that Steve might he think was coming on to him. Which, as a direct response to what Steve had just told him, would have been horribly presumptive, and crass…  and possibly a bit homophobic…

 

“I don’t mean _that_ ” He added, too quickly, and he saw Steve frown, and realised that was wrong too “I mean, I do mean _that_ , I meant I don’t mean…” No, stop. Take a breath, start again. “I _mean_ , that isn’t me coming on to you, or anything gross like that. That’s not why I’m saying it. I’m saying it because…it’s true, and because, I dunno, seems kind of unfair to have you out there on your own with something to forget” Which was, for once, Tony just telling Steve exactly what he’d been thinking.

 

Steve’s first thought was that was very sweet.

 

His second thought was that Tony Stark had just told him he loved him.

 

His third thought just came right out of his mouth.

 

“ _Why?”_ And Steve looked as honestly baffled as he felt, and Tony’s heart just broke for him.

“Let’s not get carried away with ourselves here Steve – yeah, you made some mistakes, and maybe you can even be a bit of an ass on occasion, but you’re still _you._ ” And Tony said that like it still meant something, and that meant everything. “And I don’t mean perfect Captain America, I mean _you_. It’s you that runs right into every fight, however much it’s going to hurt, and never says a word about it. It’s you who’s landed here from another planet and you’re still more thoughtful, and charming and funnier than half the people on it. It’s you that always thinks of how to keep people safe, first. It’s you that _is_ always trying to do the right thing – and just because it doesn’t make everything better every time, it doesn’t mean it’s not an amazing quality to have. No one is _always_ trying to the right thing. And, yeah, I know its sounds complicated, but it can’t be, because it’s there. You don’t _have_ to be perfect Steve – but Jesus, none of this is a reason you should be shocked that _I_ love _you._ ”

 

So Steve kissed him.

 

An, yeah, he would have expected there to have been something in between, but there just wasn’t. Steve was just so desperate to say so many things, and he couldn’t think of the way to say it or what to say first and he wanted to say it all _now_. He felt so much, and he wanted so much, and it just sort of _happened._

 

Tony didn’t recognise it until it was already happening. Steve had just leant forward, put his hand to the side of Tony’s face, and kissed him. Tony melted into it instantly, instinctively, the way you grab your arm when it’s in pain. It just felt good, and right, and he found himself parting his lips and letting Steve kiss him. And then he was suddenly so aware of Steve, the size of him, the texture of his skin, and it was like he was just surrounded by everything he’d ever loved about him. He kissed him back. He didn’t mean to, he put no thought what-so-ever into not, he just was.

 

And then Steve’s hands were on his back, hard, pulling Tony into his chest, and Tony’s arms wrapped themselves around him. The shape of Tony was a revelation, the weight of him, the sudden understanding that this, _this_ , was so obviously what his body was meant to do. This was the most natural thing in the world, this was entirely, completely, uncomplicatedly _good._

 

And then, suddenly, Tony pulled away from him.

 

“Woah, fuck, Pepper, Steve, I’m so sorry, I- uh…” His hands were still on Steve’s waist. His chest was heaving and his eyes were glassy. Oh, God, those eyes. Steve could still feel him on his lips. And then he heard what Tony had just said.

“Oh, Tony, I’m sorry” He loosened his grip on Tony – although he didn’t let him go. And Tony didn’t move further away. _And he’d just kissed Tony Stark…_

“No, Steve, I’m sorry, I just…”

 

He was thinking that it would look too much like cheating. Even then, while he was saying no, he didn’t really think it _was_ cheating. Obviously, that was ridiculous – but it just didn’t feel like the same thing. This moment with Steve had nothing to do with the life he shared with Pepper. But still, he knew, it would look like cheating. That was a line he never crossed. And Pepper always counted, and he knew he had to stop…

 

But every instinct in his body was warning him he was wrong. He didn’t move further away.

 

“Tony, I’m just going to tell you this because I have to tell you this. I think you know I have to tell you this. I love you. And I have for years. Even when you were driving me mad, I always loved you. You are the bravest, most brilliant man I’ve ever met, and you always made me feel safe, and I have missed you like a physical ache, and I’m so sorry you didn’t know it. I’m so sorry I hurt you, I’m so sorry I lost you, and I would give anything to take it all back.”

 

So Tony kissed him.

 

It wasn’t that he’d forgotten Pepper. This burning need was independent of Pepper, or Rhodey or Ross or any other commitment he’d made. It had always been there, distinct from Pepper, which is why she would never have been able to fix it, why he had never expected her to fix it. Tony loved Pepper for everything she was, for everything they had together and for the fact that she shared one part of his life – but this was just about something else. This was the part of Tony that had nothing to do with how much he loved her, the part of him she couldn’t touch. You didn’t have to give a person all of yourself to love them, or to build a life with them. This wasn’t even about sex, not in and of itself. This was about closure, and forgiveness, self acceptance and the letting go of regrets. And maybe it _was_ just selfishness, but in that moment, Tony just knew it was okay.

 

And Steve kissed him back just as quickly, because he’d missed Tony’s lips already, because having him back there just felt right. Unfortunately, some of those doubts would creep their way back in later, at different times and to different degrees – decades of social conditioning don’t evaporate in a single kiss. But they can fall silent for a moment. And in that moment Steve saw how ridiculous those doubts really were. He felt like he’d spent his whole life believing the world was flat, and then become aware in an instant. _Who_ had said this was wrong? _Why_ had he ever believed them? And then his hands were in Tony’s hair, just of their own accord, without him having to think and plan and worry about what he should be feeling. He was just pulling Tony into him, like he wanted to, like he was supposed to – like he was supposed to the whole time. This was what he was meant to do, this. He kissed Tony harder, deeper, possessed by a desire to be closer, to consume him. And then he felt Tony’s nails dig through the fabric of his shirt, and a different sort of thrill ran up his spine. There was a low, compulsive ache, a burning need, and Steve had to break the kiss to gasp for air.

“Are you okay?” Tony breathed, his mouth still right there.

“Yeah” Steve answered quickly, “I, uh, I have no idea what I'm doing, you know” He could actually feel Tony smile against his lips.

“You just make it up as you go along” He whispered. And then he made a point of looking Steve in the eye. “If you want me to stop, just say stop, okay?” And Steve smiled back. Tony had always made him feel safe.

 

“Okay” He whispered back. “Don’t stop.”


	7. And Then

Steve woke up next to an empty space.

 

In those first few seconds of consciousness, that was all he was aware of. He figured that out before he realised where he was, or what had happened, or what he was expecting to wake up next to. He just knew something was missing.

 

Tony. Tony wasn’t there.

 

Steve sat up, and swallowed a cold feeling back down. And then, before he could process it, he saw the scrap of notepaper on the bedside table. There was a wash of sadness. He didn’t know what he was hoping for – but waking up next to a note wasn’t right.

 

He should probably think this through before he read it, but he appeared to already be unfolding it-

 

                _So, I had a thought, and it was-_

_Fuck, fuck, fuck, cyberterrorists virus thing, fuck._

_So now I’m downstairs_

_X_

 

Steve read it in Tony’s voice, and he was so relieved at what it didn’t say that he giggled. Tony was still here. Tony was downstairs, saving the day. That was fine.

 

In fact, that was probably good. That gave Steve a few minutes to sit here on his own, grinning like an idiot and trying to make sense of it all.

 

He’d just had sex with Tony Stark.

He’d just had sex with a man.

He’d just had sex.

 

And not just sex – all the other stuff he’d naturally assumed was nothing to do with him. Affection, and lust, and physical pleasure. Now that he had it, he realised just how much he had unquestioningly given up. He’d spent his whole life telling himself that ‘it’ wasn’t that big a deal – and now he realised that ‘it’ was all the meaningful looks he’d never shared, all the conversations he’d never had, all the butterflies he’d never felt… He’d never been on a date, he’d never asked Bucky for advice on someone he liked, he never pictured the house he would buy or where he’d retire because he couldn’t picture sharing it with anyone. And, yeah, the thought of holding a man’s hand in public, or calling someone his _boyfriend_ , still made him feel slightly uncomfortable. Like standing naked on a public street. But at least now he _knew_ that it was ridiculous. He’d gone along with a total lie, told to him by a bunch of nobodies, and he’d given up so much to do it. Not just sex.

 

Although, as it turned out, sex was quite a big deal. Sex was amazing.

 

Steve smiled shyly, all on his own, thinking of Tony kissing his neck…

 

He’d had sex with _Tony_.

 

Even thinking Tony’s name was different now. It didn’t sound like a shameful, unsure feeling in his gut anymore, it didn’t come with the usual back-of-the-mind headache. There was guilt, still. Regrets. But at least now he was looking right at them, and that was always less scary. Any mess, however devastating, is better than the fear of what you might find. And, in the harsh light of day, without the cacophony of hurt feelings and after the panic of lust had passed – this was a mess. A terrible mess. But he knew what he was doing, now. He could start at the beginning. He could start to rebuild and hope that, with enough effort on his part, he could make it as close as possible to what it was as it had been. Not just with Tony – with himself.

 

He felt as though, now that he’d finally stopped trying to cram everything into rules and boxes, it was all a lot clearer. When he first woke up in this strange new world, making lists of observations and setting guidelines had seemed like the only way to make sense of it all. Now he saw he was trying to force lines where they simply wouldn’t go. He’d made chaos of a perfectly natural world, when if he’d just _looked_ … If he’d just looked at himself, instead of always trying to be what he was supposed to be… But at least he could start now.

 

And he saw, now, that he might never make things right with Tony. That was simply a consequence of his actions, and he had to own that. He couldn’t try to brand it as something else, or excuse it as an emergency, and now that he’d abandoned the Captain-America-Can’t-Make-A-Mistake-Under-Any-Circumstances rule… well, he’d made a mistake. He had no idea how to deal with it, but at least he knew he had to deal with it, and that it would be painful, and that was a start.

 

He knew that, if, _if_ , he could make this right with Tony, it would take time. It would mean actually being the man he should have been, and it might mean doing it for years before Tony trusted him again. He may never trust him again. That was his right. But at least Steve knew that there was a chance. Steve knew now that, for all his mistakes, Tony had still loved him. He didn’t _have_ to be perfect for someone to love him.

 

Tony Stark had said he _loved_ him. And he loved Tony Stark. And, wow, love was complicated. The Steve of labels and guidelines had naturally assumed love would be simple. The person you loved would be your favourite person, the only person you loved, the person you would naturally want to live with and share the only sort of life Steve could have imagined, at the time. The idea that you could love different people in different ways, that you could share different things, that you could know you loved a person and still not know what you want… complicated. But weirdly, natural. More comfortable, somehow, than the structure had been. True. When he thought of being with Tony, when he thought of Tony going back to Pepper, when he thought of going home, when he thought of staying here without him… every one came with a stab of panic and a frisson of either joy or relief. He didn’t know which he wanted, which he could bear to let go. But that was…okay. It was what it was, and he could start with that.

 

And, suddenly, he wanted to see Tony. He realised he would have this feeling so many more times, and probably never be able to do anything about it.

 

But he could do something about it now.

 

A thought occurred to him as he was pulling his clothes on. He picked up Tony’s note and slid it into his pocket, because he was going to keep it for the rest of his life, and then looked around for the notepad it had been torn out of…

 

*

 

Tony felt clean.

 

He knew it was entirely the wrong response. He’d even tried telling himself that he was engaged and had still fucked Steve Rogers, he’d tried using the crassest possible description of his actions, like he was trying to goad some shame out of himself. But it still didn’t feel the same.

 

Pepper was an extra-ordinary woman and he loved her dearly. His life was brighter for all the things she brought to it, and the good qualities she lent to him kept making him a better man. He had sex with Pepper as part of a relationship, as lines of a story that still hadn’t changed. It couldn’t have, because Tony had always had these feelings about Steve – and about himself.

 

Sex with Steve had, in part, about making peace with the other side of himself. Steve was, in a way, all the mistakes Tony might have made, if he hadn’t chosen different ones instead. If Tony had tried to be perfect, instead of deciding never to bother, this might have been how he screwed it up. It wasn’t a question of forgiving Steve’s actions. But understanding Steve’s flaws was a step closer to understanding his own. He could see that desire to do good, that fear of not being good enough, the fruitless struggle against human insufficiency in both of them. Looking at it in another person gave him distance he’d never had with himself. He could be kinder to Steve than he ever could have been to himself, which meant being a bit kind to himself, by proxy. He didn’t usually do that.

 

Sex with Steve wasn’t part of a relationship, it was a story in itself. Not an act between two individuals who loved one another, not in the same way it was with Pepper, but an expression of a separate quality that existed between them. Sex this time had been about being vulnerable, and honest, letting go of feelings they’d both held on to for far too long, satisfying that incessant ache that hampered everything they ever did. Thinking back, Tony might even have called Steve ‘baby’ at one point… He blushed, in a pleasant way, at that thought. There was no other circumstance on earth where Tony would have called Steve ‘baby’, but maybe they’d always just needed to be in a situation where he could. Maybe they just had to _be_ , sometimes.

 

And, maybe, he could forgive Steve’s actions. He didn’t have to decide they’d been right. He might still be able to forgive him, if Steve really was sorry, if Steve could learn from it. After all, he had wanted people to forgive him.

 

He heard a footstep on the stairs and hoped it would be Steve. Just that. No furious planning for potential conversations, no fear of who else it might be. It was nice.

 

And, better still, it was Steve.

 

“Hello lover” Tony greeted him casually, keeping his eyes on the laptop screen for a few seconds. Still, he knew Steve was smiling.

“Hey.” Steve replied with the same pleasant blush, and sat down on the couch. “Is there still an internet?”

“Yes, we’re good – I actually had until about 8am to do this.” Tony looked up at him then, a comically guilty look on his face. It was already after 6. “But it’s nearly done now.” Steve smiled at him.

 

This would usually be where the tension was. The things they wouldn’t say for fear of how it would look. The things they wouldn’t show because they were trying to make them not exist. But they had seen each other naked now. They had shared something so personal, and so pure, that there seemed little point in pretending now.

 

“Did this count?” Steve just asked.

“It mattered.” Tony answered quickly, because he knew what Steve was really asking, and he didn’t want to leave an agonising silence before he worked out how to answer. It turned out to be a lot easier when you never had to think ‘I can’t say that’. When you only had to think about what was actually true.

 

“I used to go out with the DODC sometimes, seen whole towns just _totalled_ by some impossible catastrophe, sometimes in ways that aren’t even human, you know? Places left with rifts, and rubble, and alien weapons scattered all over the place. And you look at it, and you have _no_ idea what it could possibly be, ever again. You can’t plan to build anything, because you just don’t know what’s there, under the rubble, you don’t know if the foundations are secure, you don’t know what shape it is under there. So you have to clean it up first. You clear the rubble, and you come up with a solution to the new problems, and then once everything is out the way, _then_ you can have a look at what’s possible”

 

Steve just smiled. Because, yeah, that was it exactly. And Tony knew, he didn’t really have to keep explaining. But he quite liked talking to Steve now. It was easy, now.

 

“I feel like, maybe, we finally cleared a lot of the rubble away. And I’ve not even had a chance to look at what’s there yet, so I have no idea what we could build on it. There are still some problems to find solutions to, and maybe we did too much damage to build back what we had, or something more – but maybe not. I feel like the foundations are still there, and I’m willing to work on that. The mess before, it just looked like something you should walk away from, and now it doesn’t. So, yeah, it counted.”

 

And Steve had never been as happy. Because he knew it was the best he could ever have hoped for. Because, after all these years, he felt like he and Tony were finally looking at the same thing.

 

“I’m still going to marry Pepper” Tony said, just a bit more soberly. He really didn’t think it would hurt Steve to hear it, but he was sensitive to his feelings.

“Oh, I know.” Steve answered, and Tony knew he was telling the truth. Steve still had to work out whether he wanted to be with Tony – but he’d always known he was working that out for himself. He knew he had no right to ask Tony that question. And Steve knew there was a chance that it wasn’t what he wanted either, and even if he decided it was, it might still be a bad idea. All in all, it had never occurred to him for a second that Tony would leave Pepper over this. And Steve didn’t want him to. Looking at Tony now, without all the filters, the idea of him being happily married and finally at peace made Steve very happy. Being a part of Tony’s happy married life, as a friend or a colleague or something there isn’t a word for, might well be the solution he chose to hope for. He’d have to think about it.

“What are you smiling at?” Tony asked, smiling back.

“I just suddenly realised, you’re going to have a Wedding. An Avengers wedding.”

“Well, who knows, maybe you’ll be able to come to it, by then.”

 

The computer beeped furiously, jarring them both out of the moment.

 

“Is that bad?” Steve frowned, as Tony turned his attention to the keyboard.

“No, that’s good.” He finished his typing with a flourish “We’ve officially saved the day.”

“ _You’ve_ officially saved the day.” Steve told him. Because one lesson he’d learned was that he was absolutely going to start appreciating the good in Tony far more.

“Yeah, but let’s not tell anyone that – I was never here” Tony deflected it. Like he does.

 

“So, what now?” Steve asked.

“First, coffee” Tony answered seriously. “And then I go back to LA and bitch about… whatever it was I said I was doing, I’ll have to look it up, and never tell anyone about any of this. That way, we’ve both got time to think about things. And then I guess we just go from there.”

“Can I call you?”

“Of course. Although, if there’s ever anyone else there, I’ll have to pretend you’re the owner of the crappy phone I found outside the office, or something.” Tony thought, aloud “And if I ever _do_ have to call you for a real Avengers reason, I’ll have to make a big song and dance to everyone about how big a deal it is, cos we’ve still fallen out really hard and all – I’m just saying, be prepared for me to talk like a crazy person.”

“Always have been.” Steve grinned.

 

“But, seriously.” Tony told him, gravely. “Coffee.”

 

*

 

Tony was gone by the time the others woke up.

 

Steve had actually kissed him goodbye. Which he knew wasn’t going to be something he ever did again, but it felt right in the moment. And then he’d watched him drive away in his cherry red Audi R8, feeling wonderfully tearful. He was still standing on the porch an hour later, calmly considering the horizon, when Natasha came out to find him.

 

“Has he gone?” Natasha sounded like she was restraining something as she said it. Like there was a pressure pushing up from under her usual exterior. Steve would ask her about it later. But not now. Now was for something else.

“Yeah.” He answered with a sad smile “The day is saved.”

“And how are you feeling?” She asked. _Like I’ve wasted my entire life up until today, and also, deliriously happy._

“I have no idea” Steve told her with a gentle laugh. “I’ll have to let you know.”

“So what about us, now?” She asked, a bit more conversationally, as she took her place beside him “Do we have to clear out before the housekeeper gets here?”

“Of course not” Steve grinned “Tony’s paid the place up until the end of next week, no one knows we’re here.” Obviously.

“And then?” She asked. Steve just shrugged.

“We’ll see what needs Avenging.”

 

They stood in silence for a few minutes, lost in their own thoughts. When Natasha started chatting again that’s all she was doing. Filling a gap, moving past the moment. She had no intention of saying anything meaningful.

“That Scottish woman said she had a place like this” Natasha pulled a memory at random, for the sake of something to say “She said you were always welcome, if you fancied a break somewhere else.”

 

And Steve realised it was a gift. As close as anyone would ever come to directly bringing it up, at least today. Natasha might not be telling him to ask the Scottish woman – Angela – on a date. But she had at the time. And he knew there would never be a moment more opportune, and he knew he would never be feeling braver than he was right now.

 

So, what the hell.

 

“I think she was inviting me with something specific in mind.” He began, cautiously.

“Is that so bad?” Natasha asked, playfully.

“I’m gay, Natasha.”

 

He actually braced his shoulders, the way he would in combat. He was still looking ahead, deliberately avoiding her eye, but he still caught the double take. Her mouth had literally fallen open. And then she closed it, and he dared to look at her, and he could see her thinking.

“Okay, I know you’re going to think I’m just saying this, but do you remember that guy, Jorge, we met in Brazil-”

“Jesus Christ Natasha, no!” Steve managed over a roar of laugher. “No setting me up with men, just no.” Natasha shrugged in a ‘suit yourself’ sort of a way. Steve just kept laughing. That was the most Natasha response imaginable. He couldn’t believe he’d expected anything else.

 

Wanda appeared behind them, looking curious at Steve’s sudden amusement.

“The world didn’t end then?” She asked, obviously referring to the terrorist threat they’d just averted.

 

“No.” Steve smiled “It wasn’t the end of the world, no.”

 

*

 

When Tony got onto his private jet, he actually cried.

 

Not sad tears, or angry tears, or even happy tears, Just relief. The final act of catharsis at the end of this healing. And when it was over he felt so much better. Cleansed.

 

Then he called Ross, and restarted the real world. And then he called Pepper, which was a surreal experience. He was so pleased to hear her voice, and suddenly he missed her so much, and he waited for it to make him feel bad but it didn’t. He felt worse having to tell her about a business meeting that never happened than he did for what he wasn’t saying about Steve.

 

He knew he’d never tell her about Steve. Talking to her now, he realised it really wouldn’t have been fair. It sounded like the excuse cheating men make, but this time it really was true. If Tony told her, she’d suffer all the pain of rejection, and jealousy, and betrayal, when none of it applied. If Tony could have told her what he _really_ did, and let her have her say on that, then it would have been different. But, as it was, telling her would have been cruel.

 

The lie about the business meeting was different, though. That was just him not wanting to her to know what he’d really done. And, really, it was because he was trying to be the person she wanted rather than letting her see and love the person he was. Seeing his flaws reflected in Steve had made him kinder to himself, yes, but also more critical in some ways. He never wanted to say to Pepper ‘I thought I was trying to spare you, but really I was trying to spare myself.’ He had a new arc reactor squirrelled away in his lab. Plans to investigate nano technology. He hadn’t told her because he didn’t want to have to choose, and now he saw he had no right. He had to show her, and if she made him, he’d have to make his choice. He’d have to be honest.

 

As he slid his phone back into his pocket, he felt it. A piece of paper. Something he hadn’t put there. He knew what it would be before he took it out. He held his breath as he unfolded it.

 

_Dear Tony_

_I am so, so sorry, for everything that’s happened and for everything that I’ve done. I know I can’t ask you to forgive me. But there are things I still have to tell you. Firstly, that I never thought that any of this would happen, and maybe I should have, but you need to know that I would never have risked doing this to you. I really didn’t think I was. And now that I have, I really am so sorry, and I would do anything it took to make it up to you. I am sorry I didn’t tell you about your parents as soon as I found out, it was controlling and selfish and wrong. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything that was going on with Bucky and Zemo right from the start – if I’d trusted you, like I should have, none of this would have happened, and I know that’s on me. And I’m sorry I let my personal feelings become more important than everyone else. I can’t say that I wouldn’t have helped Bucky, because I always would, and I can’t lie to you about that. But I see now that, if I’d just been honest with myself, and considered everything as much as I thought about the bits I cared about, so much damage wouldn’t have been done. _

_All I can say now is that I promise, things will be different. And if you ever find it in your heart to give me a chance, I’ll be here, waiting to prove it to you_

_Steve_

Tony folded the note back in two, and held it against his chest. Oh, if only the first one had said that…

 

But the second one did.

 

That was what counted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was absolutely terrified before I posted this. I have a total lack of confidence, and I'd never shared anything, and I basically put this here in the vain hope that anyone might spare the time to tell me how I could do it better. I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the kindness of everyone here, how much time you've all given to read this and to feedback. And, I know it sounds dramatic, but receiving positive feed back really has meant so much. I am so much more confident now, and I'm even thinking about posting other things, which I never would have expected.
> 
> So, thank you all so very much


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